This excellent presentation from Social Media Hive offers useful advice and tips on what factors should you consider before choosing a profile picture for your social profiles.
The presentation primarily focuses on picking a profile picture for Twitter but there’s no reason why you cannot apply the same guidelines to your other online profiles be it Facebook, Skype, YouTube or the new Google+.
The characteristics of a good profile picture, according to the presentation, are:
1. You should be recognizable in an instant (use close up shots).
2. Use a smiling shot as people are more likely to connect with you then.
3. Illustrations as profile pictures are fine but avoid using cartoon characters as that will make your profile appear less-professional.
All social sites require profile pictures of different sizes and they may resize your picture, thus degrading quality, if you upload one of a different size. It may therefore be a good idea to crop pictures yourself before putting them online and here’s a good tool for doing that.
profile_pictures
Thankyou@dattu