I really like Gravatar, it is one less thing for me to worry about!

If I have users uploading their own avatars or other files, then I need to make sure that I'm backing that up in addition to my database and the files that I am uploading. In the past I have had to go digging to save my user's avatars after a migration or upgrade, and if I can avoid that headache, why not?

One of the values that I think Gravatar adds is that it does it well. Sure it would be easy to provide the basic functionality of avatars on your own server. But fancy sites like Facebook have spoiled users into expecting that they can upload a high rez file and have it compress on the fly, or crop their headshot from a a group photo. So Gravatar helps provide users with the functionality that they are probably used to.

But I think that the biggest advantage of Gravatar is that it reduces friction. I think most people that are on the Net a lot get pretty apathetic about creating yet another user account and avoid doing so when they can. So the quicker that I can get a user signed up or better yet interacting right away without signing up, the better.

I am sure that Automattic is very reluctant to let a simple service like Gravatar become bloated, but I'd love if it included a bit more data, so that I didn't have to provide my website, social, and chat info every time. I don't even need the grail of a unified login ID everywhere, that kinda scares me anyways, but a simple digital driver's license or student ID that contained my avatar, contact info, and a few other pertinent details would be excellent.

In the SitePoint Forums, Matt said if he were to start another project, it might involve "synchronization, or some sort of contextual text analysis for grammar
and spell-checking. Maybe something with anti-spam again like Akismet."