2025 Roadmap: How We’ll Transform Your UX

The Open Graph #3

Welcome to The Open Graph, a newsletter by Gravatar that’s all about helping you create better user experiences on the internet. You’ll also learn how Gravatar can be the foundation to making your users’ lives better on your application and across the whole web. Read on, and become part of our mission to create a more open, connected, and user-centric internet.

Twenty years ago, Gravatar started with a simple mission: helping people put a face to their name across the web. As we look ahead to 2025, we’re transforming from “that avatar service” into the web’s go-to profile platform. This evolution means exciting opportunities for developers and platform owners who integrate with Gravatar now.

Why 2025 Will Transform Digital Identity

The internet is changing rapidly. Centralized social networks are losing trust, AI systems need reliable ways to understand user context, and people want more control over their digital presence. For developers and platform owners, this creates both challenges and opportunities. How do you build trust? How do you streamline user onboarding? How do you create personalized experiences without getting bogged down in complex identity management?

This is where Gravatar’s 2025 roadmap comes in. We’re rolling out a comprehensive suite of features throughout the year that will transform how your users interact with your platform.

Transformative Tools for Developers

We’re rolling out a suite of new developer tools designed to make implementation easier and more powerful:

Mobile SDKs are getting a major upgrade, allowing you to integrate not just avatar management, but complete profile editing capabilities into your mobile apps. This means your users can manage their entire digital identity right within your application.
Our new playground and real-world code examples will make integration faster and more intuitive. We’re not just telling you how to implement Gravatar – we’re showing you how to build better user experiences with it.
For those building community platforms, we’re introducing an email verification service that works like CAPTCHA but for emails, helping you maintain the quality of your user base without adding friction to the signup process.

Enhanced User Profiles, Better Platform Experience

While we’re expanding our developer tools, we’re also enhancing what users can do with their Gravatar profiles. This means more value for your platform:

Advanced Avatar options: Beyond traditional photo avatars, we’re exploring new non-photo options (initials ftw!), better defaults, AI-powered video avatars, and perhaps 3D avatars. Your users get more ways to express themselves, and your platform gets richer, more engaging profiles automatically.
Domain integration: Users will be able to bring their own domains to Gravatar, creating custom profile URLs that they can use across the web – including your platform. This means better personal branding options for your power users without any additional development work from you.
RSS and content feeds: Profiles are becoming more dynamic with built-in content feeds. Imagine automatically having up-to-date user content on your platform without building complex content management systems.

Looking Ahead: The Decentralized Web

We’re also exploring decentralized options, including compatibility with the Fediverse and AT protocol. This means when you integrate Gravatar today, you’re not just getting current functionality – you’re future-proofing your platform for the evolving web.

Why This Matters for Your Platform

Every enhancement we make to Gravatar translates directly to better experiences on your platform:

Faster user onboarding with pre-populated profiles
Richer user interactions with enhanced avatar and profile options
Reduced development time for identity management features
Future-ready infrastructure that evolves with the web

Get Started Today

Ready to build better user experiences with Gravatar? Our developer documentation has everything you need to get started. Whether you’re building a new platform or enhancing an existing one, Gravatar’s expanding capabilities can help you create more engaging, user-friendly experiences with less development overhead.