

Avatars.io serving 500K avatars a day, 10MM served in first month - gregarious
http://blog.getchute.com/2012/08/10/avatars-io-serves-its-10-millionth-avatar/

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kmfrk
An interesting privacy problem this venture could solve is how malefactors can
use an image search to see in what other sites a target's profile picture is
used.

In general, you should be careful with using the same display picture on
different websites for this reason.

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webwanderings
I don't know the background (privacy) details of this service but it is
certainly better than Facebook.

We're better off using Avatars (in multiples and as platform/interest
dictates) than we are using photographs of our selves on open networks like
Facebook etc.

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gregarious
We are compliant with the publicly available information so we're not trying
to unearth something that can't be determined.

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bti
Nice work. Looks like a useful service, would be interested in the pricing
plans or how they plan to make money off of this.

Unrelated, but the link color on that blog needs to be much darker. I can
barely read them, highlighting only made it worse.

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arpohahau
What is the most popular service?

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gregarious
It's been quite surprising actually. We had originally thought that it would
be Instagram or direct uploads but it's quite different.

Top Services

1\. Twitter 2\. Facebook 3\. Direct Uploads / New Avatars

Most surprisingly, the largest number of avatars are served via mobile - by a
HUGE margin.

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joering2
would you please share the revenue model with us? Obviously you proved there
is an interest in your product and problem you are solving, but now with the
cost to keep the lights up - how do you plan on making money?

thanks!

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ranvir
Thanks for the question. Avatars.io is one service we offer as part of our
broader API and family of media services - see getchute.com. While we will
maintain a generous free tier, we will eventually charge for access to the
underlying API. Avatars.io itself is not a standalone business but is,
however, a great way for developers to get started with Chute.

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pxlpshr
These types of services really need to consider delivery over HTTPS,
especially now that Facebook requires it for the app canvas and for added
security over mobile WANs.

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gregarious
We already support HTTPS for all avatars we serve actually.

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vasco
Avatars-as-a-service. Oh boy. I wonder where this will stop. I guess I'll fold
when someone goes at profit-as-a-service.

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dchuk
The vast majority of cool, hip startups nowadays have absolutely no interest
in profit or even simply revenue. Just gotta stack those users up.

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gregarious
While I hope we're a fun place to work, I'm even more concerned with building
a scalable platform and a profitable business.

Avatars are just one of the many ways we're helping serve media for
developers, brands and publishers. Fortunately, many of these same folks are
also now using our API and other services, which we do in fact charge for.

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dchuk
Hey if Avatars is part of an onboarding process to a bigger overall revenue
producing ecosystem, more power to ya, that's a creative marketing strategy.
My reply wasn't to your product specifically, just to the parent's comment in
general.

