Avatar is

[bluepinecones]

Nasoosie asked about Avatara. Good question, I did not know either, so did a little digging around to find out about it.
Here is more than anyone probably ever wanted to know:

Original:
Avatar or Avatara (Sanskrit)
Avatar is a Hindu term for the incarnation of a higher being.

Among todays more common uses outside religion:

AVATAR is a text graphics protocol used by Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes).

The AVATAR protocol (Advanced Video Attribute Terminal Assembler and Recreator) is a system of escape sequences occasionally used on Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes). It has largely the same functionality as the more popular ANSI escape codes, but has the advantage that the escape sequences are much shorter. AVATAR can thus render colored text and artwork much faster over slow connections.
The protocol is defined by FidoNet technical standard proposal FSC-0025.
Avatar was later extended by in late 1989 to AVT/0 (sometimes referred to as AVT/0+) which included facilities to scroll areas of the screen (useful for split screen chat, or full screen mail writing programs), as well as more advanced pattern compression.
Avatar was originally implemented in the Opus BBS, but later popularised by RemoteAccess. RemoteAccess came with a utility, AVTCONV that allowed for easy translation of ANSI documents into Avatar helping its adoption.

[Liz]

ATMIO = altogether too much information overload

[retiredhappy]

HUH?????

[rvgrammy1953]

WOW!! And I just thought it was a tiny photo of yourself or a cartoon character of yourself, you put in your signature when posting or in your profile....

[Nasoosie]

HAHAHAHA!!!! Thanks for that info! I had no idea the definition was so extensive, either! So now....I agree with rvgrammy-----our avatars are tiny photos of ourselves to use for identification/signature thingies! And we are all incarnations of higher beings!

[avalen]

well now, doesn't that just explain it all wonder what higher being I was
created from