About.me bids farewell to AOL, becomes a ‘startup’ again

Simple one-page ID service About.me is no longer a part of giant media/tech company AOL, About.me’s founders announce today.

About.me is essentially an online business card that lives on the web, so you can quickly list your contact information and post links to social profiles or websites, a picture, and a brief description of yourself. The service initially launched in 2009 from founders Tony Conrad, Ryan Freitas, and Tim Young with less than half a million in seed funding. A year later, AOL purchased the startup just days after launching to the public.

About.me’s founders, along with a group of investors that previously funded both WordPress and Google, financed the money to buy the service back from AOL and spin it back into an independent entity, according to a company blog post today.

“Very few products have a legitimate shot at becoming ubiquitous and we think building about.me as an independent company is the best way to get us there,” Conrad and Freitas wrote.

From the description, it seems that About.me is focused on becoming a “business card” that can be embedded anywhere that would require a signature or brief description. For instance, adding a short “About.me” card to the ends of emails, substituting the bio where you’d fill in a description on your Twitter profile, etc.

We’re reaching out to About.me for more information about the deal with AOL and will update the post with any new information.