About.me Social Profile Review

I'm always on the lookout for cool new social networks and services to try. Some are good, some just plain suck. This one is good enough that I would like to let you know about it.

A couple weeks ago, I saw a tweet from James Johnston over at Evolutionary Designs about how he had set up a profile at About.me. I went to check it out, and signed up for a beta account. A few weeks passed, and today I got my invite.

About.me Profile Setup

Setting up your profile at About.me is incredibly easy. The whole thing seems to be in ajax, and you are able to drag the windows around, and change settings without having to worry about saving anything. Any change you make is saved immediately, and you can see the changes as you make them.

You can customize almost everything about the profile, from Typekit fonts and sizes, to background images and placement on the page without any coding skills. One thing I do wish they would add, is the ability to use HEX color values. I like using colors I know, rather than guessing.

About.me seems to really get the KISS method. The profile contains your name, a title, your biography, and allows you to connect it to your other social accounts and websites.

Upon clicking the social buttons for the services you include, an ajax window pops up displaying the most recent activity from your networks like YouTube videos, Tumblr posts, Tweets, WordPress.com blog, and others.

Who's it For?

I think just about anyone could benefit from getting an About.me profile set up. Obviously power users like myself and others who live and work on the web want to expand and be able to aggregate and syndication their work. Conversely, those who do not have a website, or a good place to have themselves found can use this to publish what they would like others to know about them.

Job seekers really come to mind here. Most people know that employers check potential employees online presence to glean more information that you might not volunteer. About.me gives you a way to present the information and accounts you want them to see, in a favorable light.

About.me SEO Value

While it is brand new, and how well it will rank for your name remains to be seen, at least for me, it shows a couple good signs. The profiles are on subdirectories of the domain, not subdomains. This means that your profile will get more authority from links to other profiles on the site than if it were a subdomain. Also, the links you include in your biography and sites you add are followed, sending a bit of the authority to the sites you link.

In conclusion, About.me seems like a perfect pure profile. It doesn't try to do anything but offer a centralized location for information about you, and your other social networks and websites. It's easy to use, and focused.

Check out my profile, and get yourself an account. – Jeff Sebring on About.me