
About.me Buys Itself Back from AOL - speric
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/about-me-buys-itself-back-from-aol/
======
jbail
It was curious when AOL bought About.me four days after About.me launched. 4
days. That's insanely fast. Tony Conrad must have friends at AOL.

What's curious is buying the company back. Maybe Conrad is returning a favor?

In the end, what About.me brings to the table is pretty boring. You want a
personal site? There are 10,000 ways to do that. I don't see the value in it
personally...and maybe AOL doesn't either, but the host of VC's lining up for
About.me's $5.7 million financing round must.

~~~
kareemm
Conrad's company previous to About.me, Sphere, was purchased by AOL in 2008:

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/14/aol-buys-sphere-content-
eng...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/14/aol-buys-sphere-content-engine/)

~~~
mgarfias
And Tony stayed at AOL for something close to two years.

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mattmanser
Anyone interested what we had to say when it was purchased in the first place:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025764>

Still, bubble's been going a while now hasn't it! I think this was when a lot
of people here started saying 'bubble!'. Me included. If it's a bubble, it's
becoming a big old one.

~~~
adventured
A bubble can brew and stew for years, the original dotcom bubble did for
example. No two bubbles ever act the same either of course. This one might
rumble longer but be more shallow, and it might constantly shift focus as all
the cheap money hops from hype to hype (until the cheap money goes away that
is).

Not to mention I think it's necessary to account for people jumping the gun
early due to a reflex from fallout of the last bubble.

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danso
> _“People shouldn’t leave it to Google to define who they are based on an
> algorithm,” Mr. Conrad said, adding that there is not one place that defines
> a person’s identity online._

I know this is just marketing speak, but it is still deliciously
ironic...Isn't about.me's success dependent on Google rewarding it for its SEO
friendly title,h1 tags and short links?

~~~
sp332
The statement isn't anti-Google or anti-SEO for businesses or individual
websites. It's just pointing out that googling someone isn't useful if their
online identity is spread over a bunch of websites.

~~~
bks
The business of reputation management is becoming more and more challenging
for regular folk, business owners and professional services providers. Site
like about.me give people the opportunity to list their official profiles and
places where the comments should be considered to be the true word of the
author. I can't tell you how many times I have found either twitter accounts
or facebook pages that are not the "official" version for a person or company.
I still like the concept of saying - these site are directly connected to .me

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tokenadult
From the co-founder quotation in the article: "There’s no obvious leverage in
being part of the AOL media network, and there’s no synergy and integration."
That's the rub. AOL used to have more "network effects" than everyone else in
the online business, and that didn't help them figure out how to provide value
for their business partners. My prediction for Facebook corresponds to this:
"Facebook will go the way of AOL, still being a factor in the industry years
from now, but also serving as an example of a company that could never
monetize up to the level of the hype surrounding it." Gathering millions of
pairs of eyeballs is a wonderful achievement, but helping business partners
for your network find value by how they are able to reach users through your
network is even more wonderful.

AFTER EDIT: The submission of the story here did more to prompt me to interact
with About.me than anything I've done on an AOL property in the last two
years, so I guess it is a good move for About.me to go independent again.

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adventured
I think About.me should go after the work networking space in some manner that
gets them out of the 'personal page' business. It's a huge space that LinkedIn
isn't going to own all of. Just like there's room for Pinterest and Twitter
(among others) along with Facebook, there's room for other large LinkedIn
variations.

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greghinch
I find About.me interesting. It strikes the right balance of being easy to
use, useful, and providing value. I certainly _could_ build my own similar
profile page, but it would not be nearly as simple. And it's something of a
social network, one I could actually see paying (a small fee) for.

As opposed to, say, App.net.

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darushimo
just want to mention that flavors.me, stared by a former Vimeo employee, does
the same thing as about.me, has been around longer, and has a better UX. I'm
not getting paid, I just like the service and get annoyed when it's not
acknowledged as an obvious competitior to about.me

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fleaflicker
Not the first time this has happened!

Fleaflicker sold to AOL April 2008, bought back July 2011.

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paulbjensen
Congratulations to Tony, he's managed to follow one of those rare startup
journeys and buy-back his start-up at a profit, and escape the fate that
Brizzly encountered.

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hkmurakami
I still respect Conrad for making the initial sale (supposedly) for the
benefit of his team, who, unlike Conrad himself, hadn't experienced a startup
exit yet.

~~~
itsprofitbaron
Before founding About.me he was a Co-Founder and CEO of Sphere, when it sold
to Aol in 2008 for $25M[1]

He's also a founding member and partner at True Ventures which he has seen
exits such as: Oddpost (acquired by Yahoo!), Iconoculture (acquired by
Corporate Executive Board), MusicNow (acquired by Circuit City), and Centive
(acquired by Xactly)[2]

[1] <http://gigaom.com/2008/04/14/aol-buys-sphere/>

[2] <http://www.trueventures.com/member/tony-conrad/>

~~~
mgarfias
It's not like we made all that much at sphere. Beats a kick in the ass tho,
but none of us got rich.

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msh
What do you guys think about using about.me as a personal business card? My
personal homepage design is getting really long in the tooth and don't really
have time for at redesign.

Would you prefer the about page at about.me or using your own domain and
design?

~~~
dublinben
If you're not a web designer, I don't really care that you've designed your
own webpage. If an about.me page (or similar template profile) presents you
better, then absolutely rely on that for your first impression.

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onlyup
So who here uses about.me?

~~~
pidg
I would have used it, but it always said the username I wanted was unavailable
(despite the page saying "This name is available!").

Then last month it suddenly became the page of a SF-based developer, which
seems to happen all the time for 'unavailable', but unused, names. Pretty
annoying.

~~~
lauraglu
Hey pidg - sorry about that. It was probably an early reserved username. If
anyone else runs into this we can help at help(@)about.me.

~~~
pidg
Hey, thanks for responding!

