MeeID cuts to the chase: the 10-line profile

Written on 8th September 2008                                                                                                              0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Your online reputation is as valuable as your offline one. You can be almost unknown in real life (is that term even relevant anymore?), but live the life of a social media rockstar online. Like Mika from Dosh Dosh, the anonymous Canadian philosophy student who runs one of the world’s most successful blogs.

Anyway, I have to get to my point here. Since the online identity thing is immensely popular now, apps and tools to maintain this holy grail have been popping up everywhere the last few years. Some are million-dollar companies now, others waste away in loneliness. There are even companies that just got started, like RealMee, which closed its series A in funding last week. A booming industry of success and suck.

Bronson Taylor has the antidote for the hype

Another philosophy student, this time a British one, has given a nice twist to this ID business. He has created a really simple app which summarizes your online identity in 22 elements. MeeID consists of:

• a headline
• a photo
• ten lines (which can be links)
• ten links to your favorites (upper right corner)

That’s all there is to it. It’s a refreshing approach to social network profiles, as you have to make a tough selection of the tons of info you’re used to puting up on a page like this. To make it even harder for you, Bronson also suggests a kabilion other ways of using MeeID. Do it David Letterman-style (top 10 list) or the Git-R-Done way (a to do list). Whatever you want from MeeID, go for it. The site now has 485 users, but deserves more. Not necessarily as tool, but more like a statement.

bronson taylor, funny, online identity, realmee, social network, statement, untied kingdom

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RealMee shows you the way to Google’s top results

Written on 29th February 2008                                                                                                              1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

All you online identity experts out there, there’s a new kid on the block. It’s called RealMee, a service that allows people to set up a profile page ‘in seconds’. You can share contact details, add personal stuff such as the school you went to and display videos and widgets. What else is new? You might ask. Well, your blogger is here to tell you.

The service has one main advantage, somehow it makes sure that your page shows up in the top search results. Are they fooling Google? The FAQ says:

No, we are not. We play by the rules set by search engines. This means no cloaking, linkfarming and all those other geeky terms that describe ways of influencing search engines in prohibited ways. We know we cannot build a solid service based on lies. We simply make sure your personal website is found by search engines and the best way to help improve your own ranking is by linking to your own RealMee website from wherever you think it might be relevant, e.g. from your Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace profile.

I’ve tested it by searching for some folks from the – not so practical – RealMee index and the RealMee page was always on the first page.

This might not be that relevant for you, since I assume you’re a pretty web-savvy person. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this tech blog. You know how to get your blog to the top results. Yet for the less geeky crowd, this could be a handy way to manage their online identity. Now they can finally start to fight those drunk pictures that always show up on Google. And you know what? They owe it to Scoble, since the founders Ronald Carpentier and Hans Helms wrote this on their ‘About us‘ page:

One simple question from Robert Scoble got us thinking: “What if we could just post one post with all the stuff you’d want to appear in Google or Live Search or Yahoo for when people search for your name?” The need was clear. People need to control how they are found when people look for them online.

google, profile, realmee, scoble, social networks

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