Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and Akismet, has acquired blog avatar provider Gravatar.
Gravatar offers a “globally recognized avatar,” a 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows users from weblog to weblog, appearing beside their name when they comment on gravatar enabled sites.
Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg wrote on the Gravatar blog that Gravatar was facing “classic problems of scale” that Automattic was capable of handling. Effective immediately all Gravatar premium features are now free, and refunds are available to anyone who purchased a premium package in the last 60 days. Gravatar support will now be available to WordPress.com users and will be integrated into all WordPress.com templates.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.