About.me

My About.me page, with Flickr widget opening on top of a personal photoI finally got an invite to the About.me beta last week. I had signed up for an account eons ago (I can't even remember) and had since forgotten about the site, which is supposed to centralize one's persona by pulling in various content feeds from services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and Foursquare. The site's goals include becoming a person's "single on-line identity."

After setting up my own About.me page a week ago, I'm still feeling underwhelmed. Yeah, my page is visually simple compared with others highlighted in the directory, but I didn't find a whole lotta oomph underneath the skin of some of the more artsy creations. 

I envisioned About.me filling something of a role like Google Profiles, a customized digital business card that'd rank high in any web searches as well as consolidate my social media activity. About.me does some of that with polish -- and the ability to scan profiles is nice -- but after setting up some test links to my About.me page last week, it failed to show on the first six pages of a vanity Google search (I gave up searching at that point). Perhaps the site's too young to be spreading Googlejuice. 

The site also touts a cool metrics dashboard that lets you "understand how many people see your profile, where they're coming from, and what they do on your page." Metrics include your activity on popular sites, who is mentioning and retweeting you, and your social-media reach. There's some value in that, particularly to hardcore posters, but I'm not sure it's enough value to keep me coming back regularly. 

About.me has a fantastic name and a pretty interface, but I'm not seeing a clear business model. I'm asking "why?" when I should be asking "why not?"