About.Me is set to get a bit more social. The AOL-owned property just released a public API and SDK into the wild in partnership with Reputation.com, Smarterer, Forkly, Kred and Showyou. While the online profile site already worked with most popular social platforms, today’s announcement is huge for both about.me and their legions of users. Plus, for attendees of Disrupt NYC this week, the company is celebrating the news by having a professional photographer on hand to help create free killer profile pics.
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. About.me collects a user’s various online identifies and puts them in a single (and beautiful) location. Think of it a splash page for your identity online. Instead of directing people to various locations like LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram, the idea is to just send them to your about.me page, which neatly collates the rest of your accounts. Here’s mine. I think it’s lovely and only took about five minutes to make.
Today’s news makes the first time that about.me has opened up for outside development. Tony Conrad, Ryan Freitas and Tim Young launched the company in 2010, which was then acquired by AOL, TechCrunch’s parent company, a mere four days later. Since then, the company had reserved its API for internal use only.
The company foresees its API to be used as an alternative to the traditionally painful task of creating user profiles. For example, if a particular service implements this system, with just one click, the profile will be created automatically from pulling the info from about.me. With the SDK, platforms can add their badge to about.me’s profile pages. As about.me’s Ryan Fuiji explained to me at Disrupt, Smarterer, a launch partner, will integrate test scores on the about.me badge and Kred will display their influence data as well.
But there’s still a fundamental problem with the gorgeous about.me layouts: A lot of potential users might not have access to a high-quality user profile images. I only have the one. Thankfully it shows my good side. However, for attendees of Disrupt NYC 2012, about.me is here to help. The company hired a professional photographer that will be around the show Monday through Wednesday. Stop by and get a great looking pic for your about.me profile page.
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