Huge gravatars

Wednesday, 20 July 2005

What is worse? The fact that the size of this particular gravatar is well over one megabyte, or that it is a complete Britney Spears video?

I just send this e-mail to Tom Werner of gravatar.com.

Hi Tom,

I just encountered a gravatar in the form of an animated
gif which features an entire Britney Spears videoclip. One
can argue about whether or not a gravatar about Britney
is bad by definition, but in this specific case there can
be little doubt. The file size of the animated gif is well
over one megabyte.

http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?
gravatar_id=944d37d314488b6c99b191ce5ce42749

Considering the potential abuse of these huge gravatars
and as a result the annoyance of visitors of website that
use gravatars, it might be best to enforce a maximum
file size.

With regards,

Niels

6 Responses to “Huge gravatars”

Philip Withnall wrote on July 20th, 2005 at 6:12 pm ✦

Agreed. Even with the widespread adoption of broadband, spending time downloading 1MB, just to find it’s a pithy little 80×80 picture of Britney Spears (yuk!) is not good.
Weiran wrote on July 21st, 2005 at 6:22 pm ✦

Also agreed, I’m surprised there isn’t a file size limit already, and that this has gotten past the mods.
Nat wrote on July 21st, 2005 at 7:27 pm ✦

Hmm, Im suprised that Tom doesn’t have a way to block large files like this…
Nat wrote on July 21st, 2005 at 7:27 pm ✦

Also, I love your theme :)
Ben wrote on July 31st, 2005 at 12:48 pm ✦

I agree, having Britney for a Gratavar is bad enough!, but 1MB!!!
Aaron wrote on September 19th, 2005 at 8:09 am ✦

Oh, this is hilarious!