What is the obsession with gravatar?

[babakfp]

just curious
why add support for it and why make it the default. makes no sense to me.

[matthijs166]

I love it because on any platform that supports Gravatar, my user icon shows up automatically. It keeps things looking professional wherever my account appears, and I don’t have to deal with implementing an avatar system in every app. Managing and updating separate avatar images for each service is a pain.

Are there better alternatives?