About.me launches mobile app
April 5, 2012 | Length: 00:02:33
Tony Conrad and Ryan Freitas started About.me as a way to aggregate social media content like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter into a single hub. Since launching the site, they've grown to more than 1 million users. Now, they are making their site available as a mobile app. SmartPlanet visits their San Francisco offices to get a first look.
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Transcript
>> You may have stumbled across these big bold profile pages while surfing the Web. It's the design work of entrepreneurs Tony Conrad and Ryan Freitas, founders of about.me. They set up shop in San Francisco in 2009 and since then have made it their mission to capture a 360 degree view of your personal identity online.
>> There really is not a centralized point for me to make a first impression on the Web. Choices before about.me were lead with your LinkedIn page or your Facebook page or your Twitter page or something else. But that's not really ideal.
>> What's ideal, says Conrad, is getting a more complete picture of what you are on the Web in your professional and personal life. The bio pages aggregate and connect to all of your social media content, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, or other sites. Ryan Freitas oversees product design for about.me.
>> We're trying to give people an opportunity to show all the different aspects of themselves in a single place. It's automatically bringing in content that I'm distributing across the Web. Really with no additional work from me, anyone who visits this page has an up-to-date understanding of kind of what's going on with me.
>> Since taking the free service live, they've signed up more than one million members and were acquired in 2010 by AOL. The Web portal has given the small startup the funding they need to try out ideas like this new mobile app.
>> We wanted to kind of take what made sense and transfer it over to a mobile context. One of the things that we realized people loved doing was browsing through individual profiles. So what we do is create, you know, a really easy to access directory and then the ability to kind of randomly sort through profiles as they show up.
>> The app will also make it possible for users to check in and check out their friends on the Web. Conrad says iterations like these are part of a bigger plan by AOL to gain access to people's online identity. And while Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn may be the leaders in this area, Conrad believes that about.me offers users one central hub for all these services.
>> One of the things that I know for sure is that today you have an opportunity to make one first impression. And so how are you going to do that? Is it going to be professional you, or is it going to be the whole you? And we think it should be the whole you.
>> For SmartPlanet, I'm Sumi Das.
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