Will WordPress Gravatars Kill Off Google Profiles?

After updating Gravatar profiles in March, WordPress has recently allowed Gravatars to be displayed publicly (as they were previously only accessible by logging into one’s account).

Thus far Gravatar profiles have attracted a decent following, as the boys and girls at WordPress reveal.

It’s been just over 2 months and more than 300,000 people have updated their details[.] […]

You can quickly and easily set up a single place that includes to all your contact details, links to other online profiles and websites, plus includes a little information about yourself. (Official Gravatar Blog)

Unlike other profile sites like Google Profiles, Gravatar allows you to verify ownership of various blogs, sites and social networks by requiring that you log into each one in order to confirm that you are the real owner.

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The only set back to Gravatar is the inability to verify more than one site from each respective service (i.e only one Twitter account, WordPress blog, YouTube account, etc.).

Although Gravatars do not yet have the reach of Google Profiles (which extends into Blogger, Google Buzz, and Gmail), the site may prove to be a strong contender against the search engine king in the near future (especially for users who are paranoid against Google).