One month after About.me ‘bought itself back’ from AOL, spinning itself out as an independent company two years after the original acquisition, the personal-profile platform has announced its first significant feature launch as a standalone company.
Just to recap, About.me is a service that lets you create a one-page profile all about you – it can include links to social profiles, but the idea is all about simplicity.
Now, users have the option to connect their About.me page with their Facebook Timeline, meaning they can share key updates to their Facebook connections.
So, whenever you’re added to a directory, update your background or compliment another person’s About.me profile you can let your Facebook friends know all about it.
The second Facebook integration relates to your background image, as About.me now lets you tap the omnipresent social network to reel in photos to use as your main account image.
About.me was co-founded by Ryan Freitas, Tony Conrad and Tim Young in October 2009, before launching to the public in December the following year. It was swiftly acquired by AOL for what was thought to be tens of millions of dollars.
Then, almost exactly two years later, About.me announced it was “becoming a startup again” last month. While full details of the buyout weren’t revealed, Freitas and Conrad said that it was financially backed by the management team and a group of investors “who have backed companies such as WordPress and Google.” AOL kept an 8% stake in About.me, however.
About.me launched a slew of new features last year, including Favorites, which was followed by Compliment which lets you tell someone that you love their About.me page, the way it’s written or you love their background. It then rolled out an official WordPress widget to display a user’s profile in their blog’s sidebar.
We can likely expect at least a few more features rolling off About.me’s proverbial conveyor belt in the coming months.
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