So I guess the point of this is to reside somewhere between facebook (rigid page layout) and a personal home page (no restrictions)? The benefits over a personal page I can see are that most of the nitty gritty has been done: built-in analytics, drag-and-drop webpage design, no hosting. Anything else?
They should offer a premium feature that enables you to map your own domain name. I would replace my homepage (http://antoniocangiano.com) with something like this if the feature was available. (Of course, I could iframe it, redirect, etc... but it's not the same.)
Yeah I like this idea too. I've been managing my resume site with wordpress and I'm sick of it. I would gladly point my domain to a site that let me create a decent resume/experience page with the analytic features that about.me has.
Of course this would require the site to create subdomains for users and not directories.
One reason is search engines. With a 301 redirect for example, you are telling them that your content has permanently moved from example.com to about.me/example. Your efforts to promote your page and acquire backlinks will only aid about.me not your own domain. If about.me were to shut down or you were to decide to build your own homepage, you'd be starting from zero SEO-wise. Furthermore, people may bookmark about.me/example (it's where they landed after all) or link directly to it bypassing your domain name.
There are also other considerations, mostly related to the user expectations and experience.
Flavors.me offers pretty much the exact same feature set, with the ability to set your own domain. For instance (plug), zdsmith.com maps to flavors.me/zdsmith.
About.me is one of those ideas that gave me the "Why didn't I think of that" moment. It lead me to finding and buying http://ronnie.me The .me TLD seems to be growing quickly, grab your name if it's available.
Is there any benefit to having multiple domain names pointing to the same site? For example, I already have myname.com, is there any advantage to also having myname.me?
Not really, other than preventing another "My Name" from ranking higher in search results for your name than you. It's a land grab.
In my case, I was able to get a shorter URL ronnieroller.com vs ronnie.me. Makes it easier to say over the phone, twitter, etc.
Make sure you set up the redirects properly. Having multiple URLs that point at the same content could penalize you on search engines for duplicate content (I believe).
First impressions on the overall speed of the site are not that great. It's running very slow, certain features aren't working, etc. For instance -> Uploading a background just isn't working for me.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 48.1 ms ] threadI like my about.me. Just wish they offered a couple of more services (mostly tungle.me).
http://about.me/jacksonmiller
Of course this would require the site to create subdomains for users and not directories.
There are also other considerations, mostly related to the user expectations and experience.
In my case, I was able to get a shorter URL ronnieroller.com vs ronnie.me. Makes it easier to say over the phone, twitter, etc.
Make sure you set up the redirects properly. Having multiple URLs that point at the same content could penalize you on search engines for duplicate content (I believe).