About.me was founded by Tony Conrad, Ryan Freitas and Tim Young in December 2009, after they were looking for a way to create one place where their profiles can be posted and which has the ability to guide visitors to a more comprehensive information about them. A place that will serve as their ‘splash page’ for personal and professional use.
They seem to have touched a nerve. With seed money of only $425,000, they formed About.me.
During a short beta period that began in September 2010 and ended with the launch in December 2010, about 400,000 people signed up for the service. About.me was bought 4 days after the launch by AOL for an undisclosed amount.
So what is About.me all about?
About.me provides a place for a user to have a professional looking calling card. The site’s advanced technologies enable users to upload a picture of their choosing that becomes the background for the page. Templates allow users to write a short profile, and ink their page on the site to other social network sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and personal blogs. Users can also post links to other sites they have on the internet and with the registration an e mails service is provided through the site. One place where users can create one concise profile, and visitors can find immediately everything they want them to know.
Unlike other social media sites like MySpace and Facebook which started with the same concept, but evolved to be something else, about.me is all about you – the user. They leave the sharing and the conversations to other sites. When clicking on the link to Facebook for example a window opens with your pictures from the site. Another click will send your visitors to the site itself.
What is also interesting about them is what is going on in the background. There, machines and logarithms are crunching numbers and come up with information that might be very interesting to you: a dashboard with stats on visitors, where they came from, social media reach and how much time the visitors have spent on the page.
Being such a young company, it saw a surge of 316% in the past 3 months. Just last week they saw an additional surge of 62%. About.me is already ranked 1,907 in the United States, and the biggest numbers of users are in Canada, USA, Azerbaijan, South Africa and Israel.
About.me prides itself for being easy to use while having a high quality design. Looking at people’s pages on the site proves how far we have evolved from having to turn to expert designers for our personal space on the internet. It is very appealing and artistic.
A similar service exists in the form of Flavors.me, which has a paid service on top of having a free, limited, version. Many of the features of Falvors.me are available only through the paid plan while about.me is completely free. Falvors.me also makes you pay for the stats.
Analysis shows that the average users are in the range of 18-24, have no children and browse the site from work. It appeals more to higher income, higher educated crowd.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/19914735]
video added 2/14/2011
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Love it. Almost as good as being in front of a camera. Should I wear my xmas paraphenalia in my photo?