diff --git a/source/blog/_posts/2010-02-05-automated-profile-picture-update-server.md b/source/blog/_posts/2010-02-05-automated-profile-picture-update-server.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cacb07f --- /dev/null +++ b/source/blog/_posts/2010-02-05-automated-profile-picture-update-server.md @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: Automated Profile Picture Update Service? +--- + +After I updated my [profile picture][avatar] today, a friend of mine [responded][tweet] with: + +> Build a service that changes your profile picture in all social networks! + +He also didn't like the new profile picture, but that's his problem. My first response was *fuck off* *“Gravatar?”*. Obviously he didn't mean Gravatar, I just mentioned it to annoy him. + +A service which automagically just updates your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, Gravatar, *...* profile pictures would be quite cool. Thinking about it a bit more, there are three problems with building such a service: + +* A lot of these sites you will need to crawl programmatically using some kind of web-crawler library. It will be a paid to write, and even bigger pain whenever they change anything in the HTML layout of their pages. +* Some sites have specific and/or strange restrictions for image dimensions, file size, and even file format. +* Will people actually trust such a service with passwords for all of their online social networking accounts? + +The later problem, trust, is definitely the biggest one. And I'm not sure you could overcome it unless the service is officially sponsored and/or operated by Google or somebody. I do think it could be a fun project to undertake, but I think it's pretty doomed right from the start unfortunately. Although if I updated my profile pictures more than once every 4-5 years, I might just build a prototype for myself at least. + + + +[avatar]: http://jimeh.me/blog/2010/02/05/new-avatar-same-old-fugly-face/ +[tweet]: http://twitter.com/jonromero/status/8655908664 \ No newline at end of file