Avatars

What is an avatar?

An avatar is an online representation of himself or herself on the Internet. Most people use avatars to reflect in their personality or appearances in real life. They can customize avatars depending on how they want their avatars to look (e.g. evil looks, cool looks, sporty looks, etc.)

What are they used for? What websites in particular use them?

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, beliefs, interests or social status in the forum. An avatar in games represents the userÕs character as itself in the game world like in World of Warcraft where you level your character in order to progress in the game. You can customize your avatar in WoW wearing equipments like weapons and armours. You can acquire items through going dungeons or through PvP (Player vs. Player) with other players in game.

Why are avatars so popular?

Avatars are getting popular these days with more online games coming out and especially the rapid growth of population like MySpace and other websites where you socialize with other people online. Avatars make socializing online easier and other people can see how your personality is in real life. Other people sometimes make fun of how other avatars look like.

Do you have any avatars? Which websites/games?

Nearly everyone I know has avatars but most of them dont replicate their appearances because they want their avatars to look way better and to show them off to other people. I myself have many different avatars in many different games. In fact I cant remember how many avatars I own due to the number of avatars I made for different games or websites. One game I used to play is World of Warcraft; I play as a Blood Elf Hunter in World of Warcraft and my avatar has a long brown pony-tailed hair and he also have a goatee. I also made several different avatars in that game alone, Ive had about more than 20 or so characters in different servers.

Reference: Avatars