About.me buys people directory Wefollow

Wefollow, a directory that sorts and scores people based on their social media profiles and declared interests, has been acquired by About.me.

Wefollow was co-founded in 2009 by Kevin Rose, an About.me investor — a fact About.me co-founder Tony Conrad (pictured above) calls “perfect continuity.” We have other words for it. Wefollow’s other founder is Jeff Hodsdon, a longtime Rose collaborator from his Digg days.

About.me co-founders Ryan Freitas and Conrad wrote today on the company blog, “As About.me continues to grow, it’s increasingly important that we simplify the way users discover people on the About.me platform. Discovery has quickly become one of the most popular uses of About.me and represents a significant opportunity for us to further evolve our platform.”

The pair continued to state that Wefollow’s Klout-like scores for individuals’ areas of expertise will be used in About.me’s search algorithms. The Wefollow brand will eventually disappear entirely.

Wefollow uses Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram data to score its users on a 100-point scale based on their perceived relevance and/or expertise in a given field. For example, Jimmy Fallon scores 99 for the term “comedy” and 100 for the term “actor.”