tags and avatar problem

Hi,
I m working on a theme and want to display my tags. i am editing the content.php and my code is like this

<div class="excerpt_home">
	<div class="excerpt_title">
		<?php the_title(); ?>
	</div>
		<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
	<footer class="entry-meta">
			<?php twentytwelve_entry_meta(); ?>
			<?php the_tags(); ?>
</div><!-- .entry-content -->
</div><!--excerpt home-->

the_tags isn’t showing up, i read the online documentation and it says it should be in loop as i think it is because index.php include the loop and within that is the content is called or am i thinking wrong? what am i missing, also the avatar isn’t displaying is the said image size.