Avatar

In computer science, an avatar is a digital representation of a user profile. An avatar makes interacting over the Internet slightly more personable and gives users a better chance to have a unique presence. Before, a user could only rely on a screen name, but now that photos can be associated with profiles, it relatively fixes the information problem of having too many names.

Many social media sites such as Facebook would have lots of difficulties differentiating users because lots of people have the same name, making it hard for people to identify them. However, adding an avatar enables other users to know which 'John Doe' is the John that they are particularly looking for