You may remember a little while back we bought Gravatar. We now have the infrastructure to a point where we feel comfortable sending a lot more traffic to it.
So we’ve enabled Gravatar support for all of WordPress.com.
What’s that mean? When you have a WordPress.com account you can have an avatar by your comment, but now if someone isn’t logged in or registered but they have a Gravatar attached to their email account that will show up by their comments too. You may see a few new faces around. 🙂 Gravatars help build a sense of community around your readers, and keep people coming back to the comments.
Since doing this the requests to Gravatar have tripled to about 2,200 requests per second on average, with peaks to 3,000 per second.
Since there are 86,400 seconds in a day that takes us to 190,080,000 Gravatar requests per day, on average.
WordPress.com News 
Sweet. Nice addition! The value just keeps getting better and better…
Great, you put a face to half my community!
(What a stat: 190 Million Gravatar requests a day… blow my mind!)
Keep up the great work!
(Ich blogge auf deutsch–I blog in German)
Wow, thanks.
~*~Graser 10~*~
The goofy goober!
Awesome stuff!! 😀 Will make my sidebar prettier.
Pretty cool, that´s why i saw something weird this morning. Thanks a lot 🙂
Awesome dude! Thanks Matt! I was wondering if you guys were going to end up doing something like this. In fact, I was just thinking about that the other day.
Great work!
Impressive, most impressive.
Cool news! Avatars make online life less anonymous and more personal.
oh cool. I thought it was just a feature you guys added. I didn’t realize you bought the company! I’ll have to create one.
Cool thanks – are you planning on integrating this with OpenID?
Very cool! Thank you.
Hi Matt, this is great.
Will we also work the other way around? Do we get to see wordpress.com gravatars on self hosted WordPress blogs too?
I’ve had a gravatar for commenting on other sites and it works really slick. Maybe we’ll see less of those mysterious while silhouettes.
OK , I just logged out and tried it. One small detail. The gravatar shows up in the thread, but not in the widget for “recent comments”. Bummer.
Have to thank you WP guys for Gravatar and all your efforts. WP really deserve credit. I always feel extremely glad to see new features by WP. Thank you again for this wonderful Gravatar. May all your hopes, wishes & dreams come true on coming Christmas and at the event of coming New year 2008. Good luck- very nice. To visit my blog, Indus Asia Online Journal, please click the link; http://www.iaoj.wordpress.com
whoohoo! 😀
And keep up the go(o)d work!
I just posted about the traffic numbers and I’m thinking the same thing here. What kind of infrastructure is WordPress using to keep everything running so smoothly?
I don’t know what this means but YAY! Keep up the awsome work wordpress, love your blogging tool!
~Adam
thanks Matt.
oh now I get it!
I love communities!! Im happy with yours news. Thanks WP.
Alicia Yabeta
I noticed that gravatars were working here at WP last week. Good job, guys!
This is what’s I really need it 😉
Thanks Matt
Cool! Go WP!
just want to say think you doing good work Adeel Chowdhry all the best
Awesome numbers. Keep it up.
Thanks!
If I gave a crap it would be that much better!
Nice going! hurray!
Splendid!
Yap. this feature may definitely build a sense of belongingness, and family to all shades of wordpressers. Keep innovating, keep wordpressing!!
Awesome idea! This definitely gives some incentive for folks to come back to blogs and comment.
I still find ways to see how Gravatars work.. Do you have a sample page?
BTW, I signed up my e-mail addresses and avatars in Gravatars.
Thanks
Found it! I know how it works in WP.com. However, still not sure if it works in other sites.. Will try.. 😉
Thanks Matt.
Neat! Only getting bigger and better! I love what you guys have been doing. Thanks so much.
cool addition 🙂
coolness. i like.
You really know how to take care of us. Thanks.
Thats great news ! Me registering at once 🙂
Good.
Wonderful deed, boyz!
Hey, now tell me one thing… So, how do the non-registered readers get to know about this new facility? Any education program going on? I mean, there are quite some visitors to my blog who are regular ones… So, I’m asking in their context that how would they know about the gravatar and get it linked to their respective email accounts so as to have their pretty faces be seen? Is self-awareness, knowledge sharing and/or word-of-mouth the approach?
But any which way, this is going to be a boon-like for boosting up the feel good factor… Empowering communication… Hey?
Cheers, my friends!
Thanks you Matt !!!
Groovy!
Gravatars would make WP even more colorful and lively than it already is!
One Q: If the Email with the Gravatar registered to it is the same as the WP-registered Email?
😀
good job, something that I expected.. and to be frank, you did it very fast, than I expected… 🙂 will try that out
Super!
nice! that’s great!!!
Its a great feature.
keep growing..
WP my ever loving blogging platform. I’ve introduced these WP to many people and they feel cool with WP.
The way WP interacts with people and technology is out standing and exclusive.
Wishes..
உதய தாரகை
Thanks for this nice feature Matt! 🙂
Sip, WP emang makin cihuy! gak perlu login, eh.. foto kita bisa langsung nampang! 😀 makasih kang matt dkk
This is great! It’ll make a nice change to see faces instead of the blank boxes next to the comments from non-bloggers/non-Wordpress bloggers.
wow!
really great and I love Gravatar 😉
*thumb up*
It’s fantastic!
Another (of millions) reason to be with WordPress!
Cool!
Thanks wp.com!
Thank you. This is a very nice feature.
very nice!
Yeah, gmail!
aha!!! that explains why people who don’t have a wordpress acount have pics in my comments… thanks!
190,080,000? 😯
That’s awesome! I finally broke down and got one a few weeks ago, so I’m excited to see more custom icons around here.
Some deep thoughts…Does a Gravitar have more Gravitas than an Avitar?
I love Gravatar. You guys rock.
Wow! that’s a lot of traffic! Any chance you can combine this with pavatar? Like each blog is an openid, it could also be your pavatar url… Just a thought…
Very interesting!
Thanks!
Wow, this is neat! Talking about new faces, it was about to anonymous recognition…
Gravatars: For Non-registered WordPress Commentators
WordPress.com recently announced that their newest service, Gravatar, will now be implemented throughout WordPress.com. Why do I care to blog about this? To inform anyone who leaves comments on IsShouKenMei (or any other blog community) that you can no…
Well it looks like it’s now time for me to gravatar.
Awsome!!!!
thats amazing WordPress keep on going!
Excellent addition!
:):)
Hey MAT sorry Hey KING MATT You Are My Love! You Are Better Man 😀
Wow, thats is cool 😀
Crickey.
That’s great very usefull. Good work WP team!
that’s quite a lotactually.
Wow thats allot of Gravatars!
just test if this avatar work
nice 😀
Im logged in and without a picture as an avatar i have a gravatar!
When are we getting our WP.com avatars functional on external Gravatar-enabled sites? I’m lazy!
Interesting…
Really impressive 🙂
Cool.
No matter logging in with wordpress account or email, our avatar both still can be seen.
Thanks Mat
Have Gravatars been popular on any other networks? Will their use expand?
thats really cool feature..thanks..cheers
What a huge number there are…
love it thanks
I think it would be a good idea if there was a message near the comment form that gravatars are enabled. I just get the feeling that some netizens just enter some phony email sometimes.
thanks….nice feature
Oh, look at me.
Thank you Matt. I love gravatars. Very sexy.
wow, that’s a lot of requests!
test gravatar
wew. sweetest thing 😀
Gravatar all the way ! yeah !