The Power of Gravatar with Ronnie Burt

Robbie:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Do the Woo. I’m Robbie Adair from OS Training.

Robert:
And I’m Robert Jacobi from Botguard.

Robbie and Robert:
And we’re here to camp you up.

Robert:
We’re thrilled to have Ronnie Burt from Gravatar at the Automattic Sound Stage at WordCamp Europe 2024 Torino. Welcome.

Ronnie:
Hey, thanks for having me.

Robert:
So you’re supposed to tell us all about some of the cool stuff that Gravatar is doing.

Ronnie:
Gravatar is 20 years old. It’s been in WordPress core for a long time, and we are reviving it and making it a profile-as-a-service. For the developers out there, use our APIs to have a much easier way of setting up whatever you need with anything profile-related: avatars, social connections, all that kind of thing. This is another way of building the open web and helping people connect, breaking down those barriers for everyone. We have free profiles and free Linkin Bio pages. You set them up, fill out your details, and that can be another place for you to point people to on the web.

Robert:
Ronnie, on the spot now. This can’t just be show and tell. What about single sign-on?

Ronnie:
Yes, single sign-on is something we’re still working on. We want to get it right because when you’re dealing with something like single sign-on, security is super important. We’re continuing to test, but our goal is to have another option out there that is passwordless and supports passkeys out of the box for the WordPress ecosystem and beyond.

Robbie:
Cool. And you have some nice little toys here that you guys are giving out. Tell us about those.

Ronnie:
Yeah, these are a lot of fun. They’re NFC tags, little round tags that you can put on your lanyard or, as I have, in my backpack. You tap them on your phone, and your Gravatar profile pops up. So instead of a business card, it opens up a browser window. Now I have everyone’s profiles that I’ve scanned as a tab in my browser on my phone today, and you can easily contact someone or follow them on X or whatever you’re following people on these days. It’s just better than the old paper business cards that we often throw away.

Robbie:
Cool. I use LinkedIn quite often that way, but not everyone is on LinkedIn. So then they’re like, “Oh no, I’m not on that,” and you have to figure out something else.

Ronnie:
Yeah, they’re not on it, or they’re not logged in at that moment. So when they click the link, it’s not there. They can’t even follow you because it opens up in the browser, and they have the app on their phone or whatever. Ours just opens.

Robbie:
Awesome.

Robert:
There’s got to be some other cool stuff you could do with this. Maybe like a giant WordCamp at the end of the year where this simple, inexpensive tech could be deployed on everyone’s badge.

Ronnie:
Yeah, badges would be great. We’d love for everyone to be happy to curate their profile. If you don’t want your real name on it, contact information, or an avatar photo, that’s great. That’s important information for others to know. You want to be anonymous or whatever it is. But when we’re trying to connect and grow a community or follow each other, this is a much easier way of doing it once. Wherever you go, whatever kind of conference or event, you don’t have to fill out another profile. It’s reusable.

Robert:
So it’s not WordPress-specific?

Ronnie:
No, not at all.

Robert:
You keep talking about open. What does that actually mean? I can’t set up a Gravatar server?

Ronnie:
Well, not at the moment. We’ve talked a lot about decentralization. We have a schema of data and how it’s stored, curated from different sources of standards for storing profile data. We’re hoping to use things like webfinger and other standards so that if someone wanted to host the data elsewhere, locally, or on their own site, they could do that. We could be the connection, like a switchboard, to have that data accessible via the API if you wanted it to be.

Robert:
Boy, I’m just hogging the mic here.

Robbie:
You are. It’s okay.

Robert:
Except for Ronnie. I’m hogging. Can I just type in gravatar.com/myhandle?

Ronnie:
Yep. That works. You can also, hopefully any day now, have any domain you want point to your Gravatar profile. You can get the domain through WordPress.com, and it’ll automatically connect to your profile. Eventually, we’ll open that up to existing domains and domains registered anywhere. It’s an interesting concept. Services like Blue Sky are using domains as usernames, but there’s no profile to point to for those domains. I hope more services integrate that so you don’t have to rush to get a username on every new service that pops up. You can use your domain as your username and another way of logging in, which can be another aspect of your digital identity.

Robbie:
Will you support third-level domains, like if I wanted contact.RobbieAdair.com to go to my Gravatar profile?

Ronnie:
I hope so. We’re still working on that. You can definitely do a redirect, but that’s not the same as it being the domain.

Robbie:
Oh, note to self: redirect me.

Robert:
Yeah, you just can’t point an A record to it, I guess, is what you’re saying.

Ronnie:
But that’s definitely on our list that our teams are working on.

Robbie:
What about company profiles versus individual profiles? Can I make an OSTraining profile like I do on LinkedIn or any other social media platform?

Ronnie:
Yeah, we have a lot of those. Every profile is just an email address, so you can set one up for whatever email address you want. It doesn’t need to be a person or your legal identity. It can be a persona, a company, or whatever.

Robert:
A bot.

Ronnie:
It can be a bot. That’s an interesting use case for our API. In this era of bots, we have verification. When you connect your Meta account, WordPress.com account, Instagram account, or whatever to your Gravatar, we’re saying that the same person with this profile has all of these accounts. This helps verify that this profile belongs together, and there’s not really anything like that. People can use the API to figure out how human or how long this email address has been in use around the web, and how many places it’s being used.

Robert:
Is that already accessible?

Ronnie:
Yeah, all via our REST API.

Robert:
That’s cool. Sorry, Robbie, before I forget, I have one huge wish. Are we going to be able to change our wp.org usernames?

Ronnie:
I don’t know anything about .org usernames.

Robert:
Darn it.

Robbie:
What about the handy dandy chip? Do you also have QR codes it generates for us?

Ronnie:
Yes. When you log into your profile, there are QR codes you can download and use. I’ve seen this a few times at farmer’s markets, musicians, all these places where people have a Venmo QR code, an Instagram QR code, and a wall of QR codes. Instead, they could have their QR code to their Gravatar profile. At the top of the profile, they can list their Venmo, Instagram, etc. It’s a much easier user experience. I think that’s a great free use case for creators and small businesses.

Robbie:
Awesome. You’ve mentioned a few things, but can you tell us the roadmap for the rest of this year and maybe next year?

Ronnie:
Going back to OAuth and authentication, we’re still working on it. We have more domain stuff coming and will spend a lot of time on Linkin Bio Service. We were the original Linkin Bio service 20 years ago, but there were no Linkin Bios then. We’re figuring out what people would like to see on this page. We don’t want to turn it into a whole website, but you’ll see a lot of focus on making those more customizable and useful for different use cases.

Robert:
That’s excellent. I’m excited. I don’t like using paper cards, so anything that makes my life easier.

Robbie:
Yeah, me neither. Update everything at once.

Robbie:
I haven’t carried cards in so long, and I usually try to default to LinkedIn or something I think people will have. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to show people how to use LinkedIn that way. Sometimes you don’t want to send your full contact to someone else. This is nice because it gives them the option of whether they want to save this as a contact, correct?

Ronnie:
Exactly. You can enable a contact form so you’re not sharing your personal data, but they can choose to send you a message. We limit the message to half a tweet or half an old tweet, so like a hundred characters or less.

Robert:
Half an old tweet, half a UX. 75 characters or something.

Ronnie:
It’s on purpose. We don’t want people to send you a bunch of spam and sales stuff. It’s like, “We just met at WCU, let’s follow up in two weeks.” You get all of their Gravatar contact information and profile data in the email, and you can choose to reply. It’s a nice handy way of making contacts in person a little smoother.

Robert:
We’re going to need an app for that.

Robbie:
Yeah.

Robert:
You can’t see Ronnie’s face, but that was a wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Robbie:
Yeah. I love the little chip, but I don’t always want to have it with me. Could we have it in our wallet on our iPhone?

Ron

nie:
Absolutely. That’s going to come a lot faster than the app.

Robert:
That works for me.

Robbie:
Yeah, works for me too. Great.

Robert:
Awesome. What’s the best way to get ahold of you? I hope it’s gravatar.com/ronnie.

Ronnie:
Yes, gravatar.com/ronnie, R-O-N-N-I-E, or Ronnie Link.

Robert:
Woohoo.

Robbie:
He’s already got his custom domain ready to go. I love it. Fancy. Well, thank you so much, Ronnie, for chatting with us. Kudos on it. I love it, and now I’m going to go get my chip.

Ronnie:
Thank you very much.

Robert:
Thank you, Robbie.

Robbie:
Thanks, Robert. It’s fun. I will see you on the next episode of Do the Woo.