
About.Me Has 400,000 Beta Testers, Opens Doors To All - kingsidharth
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/16/about-me-has-400000-beta-testers-opens-doors-to-all/
======
acangiano
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.)

~~~
jessriedel
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.)

~~~
acangiano
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.

------
ronnier
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
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?

~~~
ronnier
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).

~~~
kingsidharth
Not if you make it a 301 redirect.

------
jessriedel
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?

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

------
jaxn
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>

------
gordonc
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...](http://grdn.cc/post/1171539069/flavors-me-vs-about-me-in-todays-
era-of-digital)

------
mrlase
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.

------
duck
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?

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

~~~
clojurerocks
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
yeah, right. Google says about 14,000.
[http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site:about.me)

------
JeffL
Looks like a cool site. Free link juice?

