The new year is a great time for fresh beginnings, something the about.me team learned early in our history. Just a few short days after our public launch in December 2010, we shared the exciting news that we’d been acquired by AOL. We committed ourselves then to building the best product to make it easy for people to learn about you and to find your content on the web.
Twenty-four months and several million about.me pages later, we continue our commitment to building the best personal identity service on the web. During the past two years, we’ve been thankful for the tremendous resources and support of our friends and partners at AOL.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be spinning about.me back out, returning to life as an independent company that is financially backed by our management team and a truly amazing group of investors who have backed companies such as WordPress and Google. Our team will remain the same for the most part, and we’ll continue our roles as co-founders.
Our commitment is to make about.me the web’s starting point for identity – we believe everyone will eventually have an about.me page they integrate into their email signature, add to their Twitter Bio or embed in one of their blogs. Very few products have a legitimate shot at becoming ubiquitous and we think building about.me as an independent company is the best way to get us there.
For those who ask, “what comes next?” we can only promise that many things our users have been asking for (in our forums, on Twitter, and when we meet them face to face) are on our roadmap. To allay any anxiety about what we’ve got planned, we’ve updated our original TOS and Privacy Policy, updated for 2013. You can update your account settings here.
Thanks to everyone for helping make this happen. We are really excited about this change, and hope you are as well. More good news to come…stay tuned!
Ryan Freitas & Tony Conrad
Congrats! Quick question: how old do u have to be to have an About.me page???
~ Kimi ~
Realtor | Broker Sharp Homes of Lafayette (765) 418-9613
Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? ==> http://About.me/kimisharp
Sent from my iPhone
Kudos on all of the success these recent years. I am sure that the re-found agility of being a private company, again, will allow for fresh ideas and perspectives that will propel the company forward even faster.
I couldn’t be a bigger supporter–you guys have an awesome product and I write about it a lot. Keep up the great work and good luck with the spin off!
Tom
Hi Kimi! You have to be 13 years old to use about.me
Hi, congrats!
What about the email service (provided by AOL) ?
Good luck, now that you are free from AOL’s TOS ill be using it. By the way, is your app free of AOL yet?
Ah, this is good. I reluctantly set up a paid Flavors page for my wife because you don’t support custom domains and brand-free pages (no self-promotion) as they do. Focusing on identity (not your identity, but the user’s identity) would help bridge that gap.
The email service is still provided by AOL and under their ToS.
Excited to see more of what’s ahead. Great work!
Very exciting news! Can’t wait to see what you guys do next 🙂
If you don’t have (and share) a business model, how do you expect users to support or trust you? At least tell us whether you’ll be introducing paid services, or whether you’ll solely rely on advertising to pay the bills.
See also: http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
Great news. About.me has come a long way since it started. Keep up the good work
At this time, we’re working diligently to improve and extend the existing product. Part of that work is to implement some features that users have offered to pay for. While not the sum and total of what we’ve got planned, we hope everyone can be patient as we begin to roll them out.
Awesome, I will set my oldest daughter up with one then 😉