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Anyone using about.me?

5 points by hoag ↗ HN
Just curious whether -- and how -- people are using this new(ish) service. I had heard about it once a while back, then forgot about it, then just rediscovered it again yesterday. If I understand it correctly, the premise seems pretty good actually. Thoughts?

13 comments

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makecheck
Hmmm...well, whatever it does when it loads generated enough CPU to kill my web browser. I saw only a black gradient background and a beachball. I'm not likely to go back.
hoag
that actually made me LOL :)
thekevan
It seems good, I have not used it despite registering a username there.

Not to post-jack but I would be interested what people think about it compared to flavors.me as well.

hoag
Didn't try it, but looked at the site: Is it just an alternative to weebly.com?
joebadmo
I don't understand the appeal as opposed to having your own personal domain with a very simple landing page.
m0nastic
I use flavors.me (which for all intents and purposes appears to be the same thing), and here at least was my rationale.

I'm trying to reduce and simplify my online presence stuff (basically the least amount of work I can put into it, and also what'll cost me the least.)

What I've settled on (and so far seems to be working for me, although I'm in the early stages of it):

Got rid of a VPS running my own web server, migrated email for both of my domains to Google apps for domain.

Got rid of Squarespace account and set up a Posterous blog and the flavors.me page (so I have a landing page at flavors.me and a separate blog).

My old website was basically a landing page and a blog, which was sort of a waste of an apache instance.

So now I've basically replaced paying $20/month and the hassle of administrating an email and web server for free services. If I get to the point where this solution doesn't do what I want it to, maybe I'll go back to doing it myself; but I'd rather not deal with it.

joebadmo
Hm. Interesting. I can certainly identify with not wanting to deal with the hassle. But I don't understand reducing and simplifying by using two separate services owned by two separate companies that aren't you to do the same thing that you were doing.

What happens when/if posterous/flavors.me dies (as a company)? At least with Squarespace in that instance you could transparently migrate everything somewhere else, right?

Identity just seems like a weird thing to outsource, especially when it's really not that hard. I'm a proficient, but basically technically lay person, and my setup is to have a static html file on a web host and a blog page that points at a tumblr blog, which I'm thinking about switching to wordpress.

But I'm not and never have been on Facebook, so I'm probably an outlier.

m0nastic
I was a little hesitant at first, so I don't know if long-term I'll regret doing it.

If flavors.me dies (which is absolutely a possibility, as I have no idea what their long-term plans are), then I lose the static about page that I've set up.

If I was already going to be hosting my email and/or blog myself then I agree, setting up one additional static landing page wouldn't be a lot of overhead.

But once I decided to get rid of my email, it started to get harder to justify paying for a VPS just to run a blog and a main page. It's sort of a cascading effect of outsourcing.