Avatars.io

Infrastructure

avatar api service

SHOW HN2012

181points
39comments
#95of 1,677 in 2012
Top 6%of 2012 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

6 positive, 6 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 8 critical, out of 20 comments about the project. Thread score -0.01.

Idea: 5 for, 7 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstExecution: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Clean, consistent URLs and seamless integration

    From 2 comments
    • what a great looking site (this and Chute too). but... maybe you could explain the value a little better to me? the avatar URLs for facebook and twitter are:…
      choxi on HN
    • The app makes avatar integration so seamless. Wonderful job guys. Love it. I've always been using Gravatar which is great too. But having access to all the avatars from various…
      arrowgunz on HN
  • Access to social network avatars beyond Gravatar

    From 1 comment
    • The app makes avatar integration so seamless. Wonderful job guys. Love it. I've always been using Gravatar which is great too. But having access to all the avatars from various…
      arrowgunz on HN

Objections

  • Adds a dependency and risk on a third-party service without clear added value over direct URLs

    From 3 comments
    • Why would I want to move from using Gravatar... to using Gravatar through Avatars.io. If I have to manually support all of these URLs, there's not a ton of benefit from just…
      drivebyacct2 on HN
    • what a great looking site (this and Chute too). but... maybe you could explain the value a little better to me? the avatar URLs for facebook and twitter are:…
      choxi on HN
    • I guess I am still confused. I don't mean to belittle what you're doing, I just don't understand the value it adds for me. I suppose maybe your gems or prebuilt packages make it…
      drivebyacct2 on HN
  • Hosted services should be libraries run on own servers

    From 1 comment
    • Shouldn't this be a library that we can run on our own servers? I simply don't understand the recent influx of things that should be libraries. I think building our…
      amix on HN
  • Still requires OAuth work on the client side

    From 1 comment
    • An example of how I still have to do the work is Facebook. In your example, you need the Facebook ID to get the avatar. You can do that already using a simple URL from Facebook,…
      timjahn on HN

Requests

  • Fallback lookup across services by email

    From 2 comments
    • Agreed. What WOULD be helpful is a service that would look for an avatar on various services, and serve the first one it finds. So if a user doesn't have a gravatar, it looks up…
      vailripper on HN
    • This would be great - and if it finds a few, give the user the option to select one of the ones it finds on the various social services.
      jjb123 on HN
  • PHP library

    From 1 comment
    • Are you guys working on a PHP library, or will I need to roll my own?
      ChiperSoft on HN
  • More providers such as Unicornify

    From 1 comment
    • You should add support for more providers, like Unicornify: http://unicornify.appspot.com/
      jimsmi6 on HN
  • On-the-fly cropping and face centering

    From 2 comments
    • what a great looking site (this and Chute too). but... maybe you could explain the value a little better to me? the avatar URLs for facebook and twitter are:…
      choxi on HN
    • Great work. Very useful service. Now only if there was an easy(ier) way to crop, enhance, tag, etc across platforms.
      wmcreate on HN

Questions

  • What value does it add over direct Gravatar or social URLs?

    From 2 comments
    • Why would I want to move from using Gravatar... to using Gravatar through Avatars.io. If I have to manually support all of these URLs, there's not a ton of benefit from just…
      drivebyacct2 on HN
    • what a great looking site (this and Chute too). but... maybe you could explain the value a little better to me? the avatar URLs for facebook and twitter are:…
      choxi on HN
  • Is there a PHP library?

    From 1 comment
    • Are you guys working on a PHP library, or will I need to roll my own?
      ChiperSoft on HN

Alternatives named

  • Gravatar

    From 2 comments
    • Why would I want to move from using Gravatar... to using Gravatar through Avatars.io. If I have to manually support all of these URLs, there's not a ton of benefit from just…
      drivebyacct2 on HN
    • The app makes avatar integration so seamless. Wonderful job guys. Love it. I've always been using Gravatar which is great too. But having access to all the avatars from various…
      arrowgunz on HN
  • Direct Facebook and Twitter avatar URLs

    From 1 comment
    • what a great looking site (this and Chute too). but... maybe you could explain the value a little better to me? the avatar URLs for facebook and twitter are:…
      choxi on HN
  • Unicornify

    From 1 comment
    • You should add support for more providers, like Unicornify: http://unicornify.appspot.com/
      jimsmi6 on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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