In this episode our host Adam Weeks catches up with Ronnie Burt at CloudFest. Ronnie Burt, who leads Gravatar’s team at Automattic. dives into what Gravatar is all about and the evolution it has seen over the years—from its initial days solving avatar issues in WordPress, to being Automattic’s first acquisition, and its current relevance driven by applications like ChatGPT.
Ronnie shares his first-time experience at the unique CloudFest, located at Europe Park, a setting that combines tech talks with the thrills of a theme park. Whether you’re intrigued by the idea of pitching a startup on a roller coaster or learning about the strategic importance of owning your name on the web, this episode has something for everyone.
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Takeaways
- Introduction to CloudFest:
- The conversation starts with introductions at CloudFest, a unique conference taking place at Europa Park, a theme park, creating a fun and interactive atmosphere for attendees.
- About Gravatar:
- Ronnie Burt, from Automattic, talks about leading teams working on Gravatar. Gravatar, an early internet tool, allows users to have avatar images linked to their emails for use in comments and posts.
- Gravatar’s service ties into WordPress to provide avatars due to WordPress’s initial lack of image uploading capabilities.
- Gravatar’s History and Development:
- Gravatar predates Facebook and WordPress. It was created by Tom Preston Warner, who later co-founded GitHub.
- Automattic’s acquisition of Gravatar was their first, largely because of its deep integration into WordPress.
- The usage of Gravatar spiked due to its integration with popular platforms, like ChatGPT, which pulls avatars from Gravatar.
- Gravatar’s Relevance and Future:
- Gravatar offers an open profile database on the web, which businesses can use for more customized user experiences.
- Recent focus has been on enhancing user profiles on Gravatar to be cleaner and more modern, encouraging digital identity ownership.
- Insights from CloudFest:
- Networking at CloudFest provides attendees with opportunities to learn, share ideas, and reconnect with the industry away from their daily routines.
- Who Should Attend CloudFest:
- The event is beneficial for anyone building tools, especially in the WordPress community, looking to be exposed to broader industry elements like servers and marketing.
Connect
- Ronnie Link – Ronnie Burt’s Gravatar profile where more information about Gravatar can be found. 🔗 https://ronnie.link/
Links and Resources
- Gravatar – A service offered by Automattic, working on digital identity and presence on the web, discussed by Ronnie. 🔗 https://gravatar.com/
- CloudFest – A unique conference held in Europa Park, emphasizing technology, domain industries, and business connections, as mentioned by Ronnie Vert. 🔗 https://www.cloudfest.com/
- GitHub – Co-founded by Tom Preston Warner, who originally started Gravatar, as highlighted by Ronnie Vert in the conversation. 🔗 https://github.com/
Timestamped Overview
- 00:00 Gravatar: WordPress Avatar Integration Origin
- 04:52 Enhancing Digital Identity Control
- 08:48 WordPress Growth and Community
Episode Transcript
Adam Weeks:
Hey Ronnie, it’s so nice to run into you here at CloudFest. For the people of do the Woo, who are you?
Ronnie Burt:
Ah yes, it was good to see you too, Adam. My name is Ronnie Burt. I am with Automattic and I lead the teams working on Gravatar.
Adam Weeks:
Gravatar, Very cool. And what is Gravatar doing at CloudFest? What is this thing?
Ronnie Burt:
Yeah, we are here to just see all the people that are coming here and learning about how people are using especially domains. There’s a lot of people in the domain industry here and that’s kind of a new field for me personally. But that and just seeing all the different ways that technology’s always changing.
Adam Weeks:
Very, very cool. So for someone who’s never been to CloudFest, what are some of the things that they’re going to observe? What would they see at a CloudFest?
Ronnie Burt:
Well, first, it is definitely a unique conference. This is my first time nice at a Cloud Fest. We are in the middle of Europa Park. This is theme park that when I heard that’s where it would be I still expected sort of a corporate like conference center thing. Didn’t realize that the sessions were going to be in the middle of the park and right on the rides or right next to the rides and all that. It’s pretty interesting. Fun atmosphere for sure.
Adam Weeks:
Very, very cool. So yeah, you’ve come a long way to be here. And what do you think the real like the root of the investment of being here, where’s the value?
Ronnie Burt:
I think the fact that we did have to, I took two planes, two trains and a bus to get here and then quite a bit of walking in between and I think causes you to get away from kind of your day to day and reconnect with people in person in a more laid back atmosphere that just help us build connections that we can then go back home with and put towards the products we work on or the businesses that we’re building or whatever it is.
Adam Weeks:
Very, very. Oh that’s great. So I’ve heard of Gravatar for a very long time, but I don’t really know the history of it. How did gravastar get started?
Ronnie Burt:
Yeah, it’s a good question. And I learned a lot when I first started working on Gravatar about a year and a half ago and found out that it is older than Facebook.
Adam Weeks:
Wow.
Ronnie Burt:
Older than WordPress.
Adam Weeks:
Okay.
Ronnie Burt:
And it was started by a guy named Tom Preston Warner.
Adam Weeks:
Okay.
Ronnie Burt:
Who went on to be co founder of GitHub.
Adam Weeks:
Got it.
Ronnie Burt:
And he was working on Gravatar first before GitHub and Gravatar really early on solved a very specific problem which was first of all, WordPress didn’t even have image uploading in WordPress. Way back in early version, there’s no way to upload an image.
Adam Weeks:
Okay.
Ronnie Burt:
And so when you wanted to write a post or leave a comment and have your avatar picture on that Post or comment, WordPress could. Couldn’t do that. And so Gravatar solved that. Go to Gravatar.com, upload your avatar and then tie that in and WordPress would then show your avatar. So it was baked into WordPress pretty early on when Tom went to work on GitHub Automattic’s first acquisition, the very first one. First acquisition that Automattic made describatory in order to keep it up and running because it was so baked into WordPress. Yeah, yeah. And so over the years, there’s been kinds of periods of lulls where maybe not so many people working on it. We were maintaining it. There’s been periods when people would work on it and modernize it. And you know, when is it? About two years ago, almost a year and a half ago, when ChatGPT kind of came on the stage and blew up. We were seeing our usage stats grow.
Adam Weeks:
Really? How? Like just in general, like, how much did it cost?
Ronnie Burt:
I mean, like 10 times kind of what it meant. Like in those first. In the first few months of ChatGPT, we’re like, what’s going on? Why? Why are these stats growing? And realize, well, when everybody that’s logging into Chat GPT, okay, it’s pulling your avatar Gravatar.
Adam Weeks:
So that got some attention.
Ronnie Burt:
Yeah, it caught our attention. We were like, maybe there’s something here. We have everybody that has a Gravatar account has always had a free profile for the web associated with that account.
Adam Weeks:
Okay.
Ronnie Burt:
It’s the original link in Bio. Yeah, well before linktree and all of those things. And so we’ve really focused the last year and a half on making those profile pages much more fun to use. Cleaner, modern. And a big part of that is how people can own their name on the web. So not just own your avatar and your avatar, but own your name, own your presence, your online. Yeah, Digital identity and domains has a big piece of that. So that’s the reason why I’m here at CloudFest.
Adam Weeks:
Very, very cool. All right, so Gravatar has been around a long time and it is in many ways more relevant than ever. Especially like you’re saying in this age of ChatGPT pulling information and it is a way that people can grab that information here at CloudFest. What are some of the conversations you’re having? Do people know what Gravatar is? Is this new?
Ronnie Burt:
Quite. It’s pretty funny when some people are like, no, I don’t think I have a Gravatar or that I’ve heard of it. And then they’ll go and log in or look up their email address and they do have an account because at some point over the last 20 years, they’ve left a comment on a WordPress blog or something somewhere they thought it.
Adam Weeks:
Was a good idea to have one. And they still have it. Yeah. Okay.
Ronnie Burt:
And once people realize they have it, then like, oh, well, I should update it with a new picture or clean up my profile. Profile. And one thing that has me most excited about Gravatar is, you know, there’s a lot of businesses like farmville or Spotify that grew on the backs of Facebook open graph back in the day. Well, Facebook isn’t so open.
Adam Weeks:
Right.
Ronnie Burt:
Lots of businesses have grown on Twitter, APIs that no longer exist. We exist to be this open profile for the web. It’s an open database that people can pull into their third parties. And we want the next app, the next game or whatever to be able to bootstrap and grow their better, more customized onboarding experience from Gravatar.
Adam Weeks:
I like it. Very cool. Well, thank you for that background. That’s a great history lesson. Like I said, I’ve heard of Gravatar for very long, but I didn’t know its roots with GitHub and that it was the first acquisition for or WordPress.
Ronnie Burt:
That’s fantastic.
Adam Weeks:
So Cloudfest, this thing is just over the top. Like 9,000 people are here. So I have a question about the roller coasters.
Ronnie Burt:
Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
Are you a roller coaster person?
Ronnie Burt:
I wish I was, yeah. But I feel too sick the rest of the day to make it worth it. So I am a roller coaster watching.
Adam Weeks:
Roller coaster watching. So if someone were to ask you to do the review of the roller coaster pitch. Have you heard of this?
Ronnie Burt:
Yeah. It would need to Be. I’ve heard of this. So this is where you sit on a roller coaster next to someone and you have to give your pitch of your startup or business idea sitting shoulder to shoulder while riding a.
Adam Weeks:
So like the 45 seconds where so click, click, click, click, click, click, click. You know, as it goes up the.
Ronnie Burt:
That’s when you talk. Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
You’ve got that time and there’s a pitch and sound that as you’re getting closer to the top, it changes. So I think it gets a little bit more nerve wracking as you get higher, higher and higher up of Over Europa Park. So get your, your pitch in quick. If you were to be on that roller coaster.
Ronnie Burt:
Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
What, what do you think that would sound like?
Ronnie Burt:
Well, my pitch would be everybody needs to own their name on the web, find a domain that makes sense for them, that it doesn’t need to be your legal name or anything. You can have multiple presence on the web, multiple profiles or whatever it is that you want. But I think instead of being siloed off into these proprietary companies or different products, having something tied to a domain as username, I’m really excited about what bluesky is doing with username domains, for example.
Adam Weeks:
Got it.
Ronnie Burt:
Like, I think people need to get in there early.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Ronnie Burt:
And that’s my pitch to everyone. Go find yours.
Adam Weeks:
Go find yours. Would you recommend someone come to CloudFest and if so, like who would be a good person to come?
Ronnie Burt:
I’ve seen a lot more agencies and people building WordPress sites here than I expected. Yeah. And I think that’s good because someone that’s. I’ve been in the WordPress community for a long time. This is a nice way to still have my WordPress people around but like be exposed to a whole bunch of other parts of the industry. The backbone, the from everything from the servers that are running WordPress to marketing agencies and everything that’s here. I, I would say anyone building anything.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Ronnie Burt:
Has a good reason to be here.
Adam Weeks:
All right, well, maybe they’ll come to Cloud Fest usa. You think you’ll be there?
Ronnie Burt:
I hope so. Yeah. In Miami.
Adam Weeks:
In Miami. November. Well, very cool. Ronnie, thank you so much for your time. This has been educational for me and I hope for the people of do the woo. Yeah.
Ronnie Burt:
Thanks for having me.
Adam Weeks:
Good to see you. Yeah, you too. Ronnie, if someone wanted to find you on the Internet or learn more about Gravatar, how would they do that?
Ronnie Burt:
Yeah, you can look me up at Ronnie Link. It’s R O N N I E link that goes to my Gravatar profile. And from there you can see what Gravatar is all about and get your own.
Adam Weeks:
Got it. So you’ve got a Gravatar profile?
Ronnie Burt:
Well, yeah, absolutely.
Adam Weeks:
Everyone else should, too. I do too, so. Great. All right, thanks, Ronnie.
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