One to watch in 2K11 is custom profile site about.me
Following on from my recent post about trends to watch in 2011 (now apparently to be called 2K11), thought I would post about a site worth watching in 2011.
I first came across about.me from a link on a person’s twitter bio that directed me to a profile at the site. The simplicity of about.me (and similar to flavors.me) is that is is just a single page website.
About.me describe themselves as “a custom profile and personal analytics dashboard”.
You have full control over the look and feel, and you can add a number of social networks to the list. There are also some basic statistics about visitors etc.
I signed up a month or so ago and now direct twitter users (via my lc.tl/about shortener link so I have an idea of where they have come from) to my about.me/andrewgrill page.
With the news that AOL has just acquired about.me just 4 days after public launch, I feel that this is a site to watch in 2K11.
The ease at which you can set up a page and add links will appeal to both the pro and the novice user, and with the notion of a person’s growing social footprint, about.me is a fantastic way of directing people to where you live on the web.
What about.me need to do now with the money from AOL is to fix up the backend of the site (feeds from Foursquare are weeks old) and also invest heavily in SEO to ensure user’s profiles make it onto Google’s first page from a name search.
One of the benefits of being on multiple social networks is that the big guys (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Slideshare, LinkedIn) work hard to put your name and your profile at the top of name searches on Google. For example, when you Google my name, the front page is full of my social network links – which is what you would expect.
Why not head over to about.me, be an early adopter and claim your page before someone with the same name as you gets in first, and help promote your social footprint to the world. My suggestion is to direct the link on your Twitter bio to your about.me page so a potential follower can get a quick sense of what you are about without having to search far and wide.
It will be interesting to see who snaps up flavors.me next as the personal branding/dashboard space is likely to hot up following the AOL purchase, but about.me seem to have bragging rights with the best domain name.
About Andrew
Based in London, The Actionable Futurist and former Global Managing Partner at IBM, Andrew Grill is a popular and sought-after presenter and comementator on issues around digital disruption, workplace of the future and new technologies such as blockchain. Andrew is a multiple TEDx and International Keynote Speaker.