Avatars.io serving 500K avatars a day, 10MM served in first month | Hacker News Reader

Avatars.io serving 500K avatars a day, 10MM served in first month

blog.getchute.com

35 pointsgregarious18 comments

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.

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.

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

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.

What is the most popular service?

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.

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!

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.

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.

We already support HTTPS for all avatars we serve actually.

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.

You'll fold when someone reinvents investment funds?

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

Oh yeah? Name three.

Umm...

Instagram

Foursquare (though it appears they've seen the light a few weeks back finally)

Color

AirTime

Path

There's five. I can continue.

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.

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.

This is the kind of mean-spirited comment with very low content which has no place in this community.

Please, if all you have to offer is generalized negativity, don't comment.

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