In my mind there are two players on the offsite splash page field today. Flavors.me, (Flavours.me works up there just the same!)& About.me. Flavors.me was first to the scene on Feb 23, 2010 and enjoys what appears to be a slow and steady growth, while About.me has arrived more recently and with quite a bit more fanfare. Also noteworthy is the fact that About.me was acquired only 4 days after their official launch.
Shown below are my pages from both of these sites. I add them to show that the end result from either is aesthetically pleasing and quite equal.
The user interface is comparable as well, and any novice designer can expect to obtain a professional looking page and a pleasant experience with little hassle.
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About.me  |
Flavors.me  |
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| Backgrounds: choice |  |
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| Background: upload |  |
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| Customizable fonts, colors, layout |  |
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| Analytics | Twitter |
Traffic to page Links to page |
| SEO Options | - | $$ custom title & description |
| Links | NoFollow | NoFollow |
| SITES: | ||
| Bandcamp | - |  |
| Behance | - |  |
| Blogger |  |
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| Cowalla | - |  |
| DailyBooth | - |  |
| Delicious | - |  |
| Digg | - |  |
| Etsy | - |  |
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| Flickr |  |
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| Formspring |  |
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| FourSquare |  |
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| Github | - |  |
| Goodreads | - |  |
| Last.fm | - |  |
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| Netflix | - |  |
| Picasa | - |  |
| Posterous |  |
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| SoundCloud | - |  |
| Tripit | - |  |
| Tumblr |  |
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| Typepad |  |
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| Vimeo | - |  |
| WordPress |  |
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| YouTube |  |
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| Add Custom Feed URL |  |
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| Premium option | - | $20/year |
About.me or Flavors.me?
John Wehr, lead developer for Flavors.me pointed out in a Sept. 2010 Quora discussion that the two products play different roles. I couldnt agree more. In my mind its a matter of "sexy" vs. SEO. Youll have to make that choice for yourself based on your needs and preferences.
For personal branding, I really do lean toward the sexiness of the About.me URL. About.me is simply more to the point and self explanatory to me. I am confident that a paid version will be offered in the future, and that with this option will come advanced analytics, more options to customize appearance, and the ability to add custom meta data. This is merely an opinion of course, but certainly what I would offer were it my project. Well have to see what AOL does with this new acquisition.
From a business perspective, should one decide that having a splash page is a benefit, Flavors.me gets my vote. While it is only available to paid users ($20 US per year), the ability to control meta data (title & description) alone is enough to sway my choice for business.
Are you currently using either of these products? What is your opinion on the use of an offsite splash page for business purposes and/or SEO? I would love to hear your input in the comments.
Great comparison for these great resources – thank you!
I already had my About.me pages up personally and professionally before I learned about Flavour.me from you but now I am definitely going to make use of both platforms so I can leverage all of their strengths!
Great article,
Shawna
Thanks for your comment Shawna. It is I who should be thanking you; a question posted by you on LinkedIn prompted me to look deeper into these two services from a business perspective! I appreciate the inspiration and input that prompted this post!
.-= James Ball recently posted: Bookmarked – Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist =-.
Thanks for the write-up James. I think it’s probably worth pointing out Flavors.me *does* support Goodreads, Netflix and Last.fm (and another 10+ services not listed in your article).
Flavors.me also offers the integration of Google Analytics or Clicky for page statistics.
Rob, thank you for your comment here today. There was indeed an error with the check marks next to a few of the services earlier. This has been corrected. I appreciate your pointing out that Flavors.me integrates with Google and Clicky analytics. This is indeed a valuable feature for potential business users!
.-= James Ball recently posted: Bookmarked – Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist =-.
Hi James, thanks for quick reply. Sorry to be a pain by Flavors.me also supports Formspring, Typepad and Foursquare (actually everything about.me does and 10+ more).
Cheers.
I set up a flavors.me account and I have been having some real trouble getting my domain to go to their site.
I’m going to set up an about.me account now and see if it’s any better. Thanks.
I hate that you are having trouble with it. I can’t discern exactly what the problem might be from your comment, but If I can help you, feel free to email me. Click through under my picture up there and use my contact form on my blog if you’d like. Let me know if you get it sorted out!
.-= James Ball recently posted: Bookmarked – Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist =-.
This is a great comparison. I’ve been using about.me but will definitely look into flavour.me as it could help my websites
Thank you for your comment Tom, I’m glad that you found this information useful!
.-= James Ball recently posted: Bookmarked – Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist =-.
I don’t see any nofollow on my About.me profile
.-= LaurentB recently posted: Les bons Blogs SEO en anglais =-.
i think you could add zerply.com into this discussion, although it leans more towards the professional profile than just a social media hub. Its only in beta testing stage so it doesnt have many of the features listed above. but from my experience its been super easy to set up and has fantastic themes by top web designers
Interesting article !
I signed up to about.me with the idea of using the service has my official webpage (with my own .com domain)
Now that my profile is completed and online, I’m worried that about.me won’t be has good has having a “regular” website for a good google ranking…
Like you mentioned, title can’t be changed, there’s no extra meta data support.
I’m using domain fowarding to my about.me profile so, I guess my domain won’t show in the search ?
One thing I didnt like about Flavors.me, as I pointeed on my blog too is that it shows your entire post for say wordpress.com or Blogger or in your case the entire posta at http://noteasytoforget.com/ thats not like really reader friendly as it involves too much scrolling!!!
.-= Manveet Singh recently posted: Been in Love 30 & beyond =-.
Though what I really like about Flavors.me is that they pick up the posts, tweets etc faster than About.me
My last tweet is shown as on January 15 on About.me
I have mailed to support for About.me and he told me that “There is occasionally a delay in caching the most recent information from 3rd party services, but more than a couple days is unusual” , since then my blog posts have been updated, but no luck with Twitter 🙁
.-= Manveet Singh recently posted: Been in Love 30 & beyond =-.
The SEO benefits, and extra site linking options make flavors.me a easy choice. $20 a year? No brainer.
Please replace previous post, spelled my name wrong… 😉
Hi James, awesome compare page. Really detailed. Just wanted to mention that anyone wanting to host their own about me page or simple website they should try http://squeegeepage.com/
You have to host it on your own windows server but you own it and use your own domain name. Just pay one time, yours forever. Also have different versions so you could add multiple pages and make it an actual website.
Cheers and thanks for letting me comment!