The one thing that has majorly kept me from creating any one of several avatar ideas, for B12F usage, is that there isn't an upload-to-profile version of avatar regferencing, meaning I'd have to rely upon hosting services. (I keep on wondering if DFFD could legitimately do this, given the close connection, but never got around to actually checking. Plus I could imagine overwhelming DFFD for image requests, something a major image-host is at least prepared for and not reliant upon fan goodwill alone.) Then again, externally hosted images don't tend to need me to optimise the image below a certain size, whilst still trying to be clever in my creation.
Imgur's read-interface tends to try to get me to install the tablet app (annoying, when I,m only an occasional visitor of its direct URLs, and not yet ready to open a write-in account for any reason), luckily, I don't notice any issue when the image is embedded.
My own go-to for image-hosting of my personal creations, such as they are, is still tinypic. Although, the few rare times I've used them over the last year or five, I've noticed CAPTCHAesque hurdles to foil the robot image-flooders that were so awkward that they nearly foiled me (some browsers I use just don't work well with the client-side scripting necessary to serve and answer the usage-puzzles, so depends upon the platform I'm using at the time as to whether it's possible), and sometimes the image uploads but I can't (easily, sometimes at all and I have to repeat!) get the URL necessary for embedding, preBBCoded or otherwise.
Still, interesting to know this info. You might have just prompted me to generate and use a Bay12 avatar, at last. Watch this space!