Avatar

Definition:

Avatar is an icon or symbol that people use to represent or identify themselves on the internet or in the virtual community. It can also refer to the characteristic related with the screen name or internet user.

Origin

The "avatar" derives from the Sanskrit word Avatāra, meaning "incarnation" and usually implying a deliberate descent into mortal realms for special purposes. The term is used primarily in Hindu texts. For example, Krishna is the eighth avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu the Preserver, whom many Hindus worship as God. The Dasavatara are ten particular "great" incarnations of Vishnu.("Avatar (icon)." Wikipedia. Febuary 15,2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%28icon%29)

Avatar in our lives

As time goes by, Avatar has become the icon that can repesent user themselves. Name in the form of text has no longer been attractive anymore. People now would like to use things as cool as possilbe to stand for themselves. Pictures, no matter from users themselves or animie ones can give the general idea of users' characteristics. Some websites even offer all kinds of decoractions or orgament stuffs for people to use on their avatars so that it can look cool or beautiful and at the same time, vendors can charge the money. It seems that in virtual community now, people would rather use avatars to represent themselves than showing their real face.

There are some positions that users can use avatar

Forums

Despite the widespread use of avatars, it is unknown which Internet forums were the first to use them; the earliest forums did not include avatars as a default feature, and they were included in unofficial "hacks" before eventually being made standard. Avatars on Internet forums serve the purpose of representing users and their actions, personalizing their contributions to the forum, and may represent different parts of their persona or social status in the forum.

The traditional avatar system used on most Internet forums is a small (96x96 pixels, for example) square-shaped area close to the user's forum post, where the avatar is placed. Some forums allow the user to upload an avatar image that may have been designed by the user or acquired from elsewhere. Other forums allow the user to select an avatar from a preset list or use an auto-discovery algorithm to extract one from the user's homepage. Some avatars are animated. This avatar is an example of a four-image avatar. Some avatars are animated. This avatar is an example of a four-image avatar.

Other avatar systems exist, such as on Gaia Online, where a pixelized representation of a person or creature is used, which can then be customized to the user's wishes.(Wikipedia)

Games

social softwares

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was the first popular instant-messaging program to use avatars, picking up on the idea from PC games. However, users of AIM commonly refer to avatars as buddy icons. Today, many popular instant-messaging clients use avatars, including Trillian, Gaim, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.

Instant messaging avatars are usually very small. AIM icons are 48x48 pixels, although many icons can be found online that measure 50x50 pixels.

The latest use of avatars in instant messaging is dominated by dynamic avatars. The user choose an avatar that represent him while chatting and the use of a text to speech technology, enable the avatar to talk the texts being used at the chat window. One of the pioneers on that form of avatars is Gizmoz.com. Another form of use for these kind of avatars is for video chats/calls. Skype has featured on her latest release (3.0) the option to use talking avatars while making video calls, two companies are doing that on Skype - Gizmozand Crazytalk and they offer a new way of self expression over IM experience.

AIM buddy icons have been used as an experimental form of viral marketing by some advertising firms.

-- WangLiuyang - 16 March, 2007

to top