About.me: Next Gen. Digital Business Card

My account over at About.me was initially created just as an experiment to see what the platform was like. The more time I’ve spent customizing my profile, the more I’ve realized that About.me really has the potential to become the next generation digital business card.

Not only is the profile itself surprisingly customizable (check out the directory if you think I’m kidding), but the social network integration is among the cleanest I’ve seen in a while. When you add your various social networks to your profile you have the option of just making them links, or actually loading the content into About.me. I have noticed some quirks, Foursquare for example will not show how many checkins I’ve got no matter how many times I remove and relink it, and I can’t seem to figure out what permissions it’s using to Facebook (since I gave it full permission and it only found three photos of me). On the flipside, the integration to Flickr, LinkedIn and Twitter seems spot on.

As the platform continues to develop, I expect it to get even more powerful; potentially to the point of being a central hub between networks. If you don’t have an account, head over to About.me and sign up (you’d hate to wait a year and not be able to get a cool URL).