About.me Sells for "Tens of Millions" One Week After Launching

[2 Shoes]

I first heard about About.me in September and though it looked cool. It's a site with a full page picture of yourself and all your credentials/social media pages/etc in one place. I thought it was a brilliant name for a site and they played the theme well. The pages look so simple but could be useful for individuals in many ways.

It was in Beta until about one week ago, when it officially launched to the public. Apparently AOL acquired it today for "tens of millions". I think this is amazing and shows the power of a good idea that is thought out and patiently executed.

Here's the TechCrunch article and video:

AOL Acquires Personal Profile Startup About.Me

 

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[x9vjzs098u123rnl]

Tony Conrad, co-founder of About.Me, has had other companies of his acquired by AOL before (can't remember the name right now.. it's escaping me). I also believe that he's on the Board of Directors for Automattic (WordPress). They also had quite a few high-profile advisors to the About.Me project (Tim Ferriss for one)

Anyways, I think that's great news for them, About.Me is truly a great service. I was lucky enough to use some connections and get an invite a couple months ago when they were just starting to hand them out:

Ryan Lucht (ryanlucht) on about.me

 

[sk24iam]

I don't see the point. It displays all your social networking accounts along wit a picture of yourself?

If I wanted something like that I would register my own domain with my name in it.

 

[Icy]

I don't see the point. It displays all your social networking accounts along wit a picture of yourself?

If I wanted something like that I would register my own domain with my name in it.

It's a much less hassle, and uses less time to set it up.

Frankly, I'm willing to bet the majority of the early adopters only have accounts to simply have their names in case it becomes popular. I know that's the only reason I got my name. Never plan to touch the account unless it does become big.

 

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[mottdog]

Think about it now. If your in the social biz and please correct me if I miss something here. You may have:
1. Facebook
2. Myspace
3. Twitter
4. Linkedin
5. Youtube
6. Blogger
7. Yelp- not on their list yet
I can go on and on. It's too much to manage and remember all of the usernames with passwords.
FYI - I just created mine to secure my own name.

 

[DeletedUser394]

I too don't see the point. Social Networking is becoming ridiculous.

I understand facebook
Twitter is pointless (Proudly never registered)
LinkedIn is a good networking tool
The rest I can live without.

 

[mottdog]

I too don't see the point. Social Networking is becoming ridiculous.

I understand facebook
Twitter is pointless (Proudly never registered)
LinkedIn is a good networking tool
The rest I can live without.

I can sympathize with you on that. For personal use I agree, one doesn't need and use all of these accounts. I just get them, just so no one grabs my name and gets me in trouble.
Now for my niche I will be using a few of these communication channels due to my audience being so diverse and I have use whatever gets me the best results.

 

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[Russ H]

I see google becoming an aggregator-- right now, a business may be listed (or have reviews) on dozens of sites, but just google the business name, and google presents all the different review sites/links in one place.

I could see google also presenting all of the social networking sites when you google someone's name.

So, yeah, I can see the value in "about.me"

-Russ H.

 

[2 Shoes]

I don't see the point. It displays all your social networking accounts along wit a picture of yourself?

If I wanted something like that I would register my own domain with my name in it.

Fortunately, you know how to register a domain name, connect it to your hosting account, set up a background with code, and add all of your social media links.

I would be willing to bet that 98% of the people that use social media and would use a site like this would not know how to do most, if not all, of what I just listed above. The site makes it easy create you own website, for free, and it looks pretty and has all the information that anyone would want to know about you in one place.

I think the look, ease of use, easy to remember domain, and the idea of being a part of a site with other people (aka social media) is the big draw. They are marketing it like back in the day when you used to hear to buy yourname.com before someone else gets it.

 

[FDJustin]

If AOL owns it, I'm not sure I even want it. I don't know what the company is like now, but 'in the day' they were kind of underhanded.

 

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[Russ H]

If AOL owns it, I'm not sure I even want it. I don't know what the company is like now, but 'in the day' they were kind of underhanded.

Yeah, what can you say about a company that bought TimeWarner for $162 BILLION?

Or Netscape for $4.2 BILLION?

Or Mapquest for $1.1 BILLION?

( . . . that they must have had some spare cash laying around, back then?) :smxB:

-Russ H.

 

[FDJustin]

I'd say it must have been from all the times I clicked on the fake scroll-bar and got sixty popups, Russ.

 

[kamrikkon]

t was in Beta until about one week ago, when it officially launched to the public. Apparently AOL acquired it today for "tens of millions". I think this is amazing and shows the power of a good idea that is thought out and patiently executed.

 

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[valuegiver]

It hasn't made money yet, but AOL already bought it.

 

[FDJustin]

Hmm. Well, it does sound useful. I don't know if it's $10,000,000 useful, but maybe. There is always room to grow it's concept and plenty of possible ways to monetize. (I admit, I wouldn't be able to guess at what the best ways are.)

 

[valuegiver]

Only time can tell. Would you pay for such service? Or can you generate enough income from advertising? I doubt this site will take off (make money). This is pretty much like YouTube, until now Google is still losing money from the purchase.

http://gigaom.com/video/analyst-youtube-could-turn-a-profit-in-2010/

Hmm. Well, it does sound useful. I don't know if it's $10,000,000 useful, but maybe. There is always room to grow it's concept and plenty of possible ways to monetize. (I admit, I wouldn't be able to guess at what the best ways are.)

 

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[FDJustin]

I'm not too sure. I see value in the website, but I can't begin to guess if it could make as much as it was bought for. I would have charged immediately for the service. I'm not a big fan of the free model (although I plan to psudouse it.)

But I'm not so sure google is truly at a loss with youtube. All the extra analytical data they have is right up their game alley. Seems just about everything they do is to collect scores of 'net users data. I wouldn't be surprised if google could suggest what kind of exotic fruit I'd like at this point. Or accurately predict how I'd react if world war three broke out. Or come up with a thousand new products, have them thrown to market, and immediately become profitable within weeks.