WordPress.com has always integrated well with Gravatar. They now look to be extending this integration beyond images to profiles too.

Now you can add to your Gravatar account pictures, a description about who you are, and links to the websites you own. Additionally you can add contact information such as Skype, AIM, MSM Messenger, Yahoo Chat, Email and telephone numbers. You can also integrate social media services such as Twitter, Friendfeed, Linkedin, Facebook, Digg, Youtube and much more.

These new Gravatar profile options are already integrated with WordPress.com, though I hope that we see this integrated into the self-hosted version of WordPress as well as it would allow us more information about visitors.

For example, if someone leaves a comment on your blog using their Gravatar email at the moment, their Gravatar image is displayed. However, we could potentially show choose to display much more information such a link to the users Twitter account or details of how to contact them via MSN or Skype.

Hopefully a plugin will be developed for this shortly. However, it would be good to see something included within an official release or a core plugin.

News Link : Gravatar-Powered Profiles