About.Me Has 400,000 Beta Testers, Opens Doors To All

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/16/about-me-has-400000-beta-testers-opens-doors-to-all/

by kingsidharth • 16 years ago

23 24 16 years ago

techcrunch.com

jaxn2• 16 years ago

I noticed that they basically invited people who asked them publicly on twitter (at least that is how I did it).

I like my about.me. Just wish they offered a couple of more services (mostly tungle.me).

http://about.me/jacksonmiller

jessriedel2• 16 years ago

So I guess the point of this is to reside somewhere between facebook (rigid page layout) and a personal home page (no restrictions)? The benefits over a personal page I can see are that most of the nitty gritty has been done: built-in analytics, drag-and-drop webpage design, no hosting. Anything else?

jaxn2• 16 years ago

There may be some SEO benefit for people to have their name in the URL?

acangiano2• 16 years ago

They should offer a premium feature that enables you to map your own domain name. I would replace my homepage (http://antoniocangiano.com) with something like this if the feature was available. (Of course, I could iframe it, redirect, etc... but it's not the same.)

vyrotek• 16 years ago

Yeah I like this idea too. I've been managing my resume site with wordpress and I'm sick of it. I would gladly point my domain to a site that let me create a decent resume/experience page with the analytic features that about.me has.

Of course this would require the site to create subdomains for users and not directories.

BrandonM• 16 years ago

Why not create a DNS webhop?

jessriedel2• 16 years ago

Why is a redirect not the same? Is it just the split second of time it takes? (I obviously don't know anything about this stuff.)

acangiano2• 16 years ago

One reason is search engines. With a 301 redirect for example, you are telling them that your content has permanently moved from example.com to about.me/example. Your efforts to promote your page and acquire backlinks will only aid about.me not your own domain. If about.me were to shut down or you were to decide to build your own homepage, you'd be starting from zero SEO-wise. Furthermore, people may bookmark about.me/example (it's where they landed after all) or link directly to it bypassing your domain name.

There are also other considerations, mostly related to the user expectations and experience.

riobard• 16 years ago

I thought one of their selling points is the ultra cool domain name? about.me/username??

rradu• 16 years ago

Your own TLD is a lot cooler than a directory.

crux• 16 years ago

Flavors.me offers pretty much the exact same feature set, with the ability to set your own domain. For instance (plug), zdsmith.com maps to flavors.me/zdsmith.

ronnier2• 16 years ago

About.me is one of those ideas that gave me the "Why didn't I think of that" moment. It lead me to finding and buying http://ronnie.me The .me TLD seems to be growing quickly, grab your name if it's available.

TimMontague• 16 years ago

Is there any benefit to having multiple domain names pointing to the same site? For example, I already have myname.com, is there any advantage to also having myname.me?

ronnier2• 16 years ago

Not really, other than preventing another "My Name" from ranking higher in search results for your name than you. It's a land grab.

In my case, I was able to get a shorter URL ronnieroller.com vs ronnie.me. Makes it easier to say over the phone, twitter, etc.

Make sure you set up the redirects properly. Having multiple URLs that point at the same content could penalize you on search engines for duplicate content (I believe).

JeffL• 16 years ago

Looks like a cool site. Free link juice?

gordonc• 16 years ago

This site is a poor copy of flavors.me. I once took the liberty of illustrating that idea: http://grdn.cc/post/1171539069/flavors-me-vs-about-me-in-tod...

duck• 16 years ago

After searching for some of the folks they have spotlighted on Google and not seeing their page listed makes me wonder what is the point?

mrlase• 16 years ago

First impressions on the overall speed of the site are not that great. It's running very slow, certain features aren't working, etc. For instance -> Uploading a background just isn't working for me.

clojurerocks2• 16 years ago

Seems too overly simplistic. All the profiles also seem colorful but generic and it seems theres not alot you can do with them.

clojurerocks2• 16 years ago

I also dont understand the point of the analytics since theres nothing really to see on your page. Maybe the service will improve overtime.

chairface• 16 years ago

yeah, right. Google says about 14,000. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

About.Me Has 400,000 Beta Testers, Opens Doors To All

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