Some avid social-network users are commissioning artists to create small digital images to represent themselves in the online world. Other Internet-savvy people use automated computer programs and Web sites to generate posterized likenesses of themselves.
Matt Held, a 38-year-old painter in Brooklyn, New York, has gained Internet celebrity for painting peoples’ Facebook photos and then giving them to his subjects. And some identity researchers are trying to take the online portrait beyond images of people’s faces entirely.
All of these efforts underscore the fact that tiny images, often no bigger than a postage stamp, have become stand-ins for peoples’ identities online.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/27/online.portrait.avatar/index.html?iref=newssearch
