Learningly

The term ‘Avatar’ can signify a number of things, but the most common and the most popular of them is the computer avatars which we use in our day to day life. It can simply be called as a representation of a user in a computer or a network. Avatars can either be three dimensionally simulated models and a simple two dimensional picture which one can use in his profile. Overall, it can be called as an object or an abstract representation of the user.

It would be funny to trace back the origin of this term and its usage with respect to the virtual world. Avatar means incarnation and is basically a Sanskrit word. It is used to represent a person in the virtual world but the origin was not from the internet. Avatars were first used in computer games since 1985 as a representation of the user playing the game.

The first usage of avatars started in internet forums where people rarely use their name nowadays. Though avatars are widely used now, its first usage has not yet been traced till now. The main reason behind this is that the initial internet forums did not support this feature and it was only those geeks and technical savvies that brought the usage of avatars into internet forums. In fact these went a long way to hack their profile in order to do these changes.

In the beginning these avatars were simply texts or images but right now there are different forms of avatars for a person to choose from. Animated avatars were the next to come and they had a few images in a sequence which played in a loop. As more and more people started using these, a number of creative ideas were put into creating them. Right now a person can go on and cartoon himself or make a 3D animated avatar of him. Technology is constantly on its heels.

These avatars are also used in Internet chat and instant messaging programs. It was Cybertown which brought in the technology of three dimensional avatars to the internet. As the popularity of these avatars keep growing people not only want them to be better designed but they also want these avatars everywhere. They want it on blog comments too. If you were a popular blogger, you would support this cause talent always deserves an identity and nothing can be better than an avatar.