In my mind there are two players on the offsite splash page field today. Flavors.me, (Flavours.me works up there just the same!)& About.me. Flavors.me was first to the scene on Feb 23, 2010 and enjoys what appears to be a slow and steady growth, while About.me has arrived more recently and with quite a bit more fanfare. Also noteworthy is the fact that About.me was acquired only 4 days after their official launch.
Shown below are my pages from both of these sites. I add them to show that the end result from either is aesthetically pleasing and quite equal.
The user interface is comparable as well, and any novice designer can expect to obtain a professional looking page and a pleasant experience with little hassle.
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About.me  |
Flavors.me  |
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| Backgrounds: choice |  |
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| Background: upload |  |
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| Customizable fonts, colors, layout |  |
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| Analytics | Twitter |
Traffic to page Links to page |
| SEO Options | - | $$ custom title & description |
| Links | NoFollow | NoFollow |
| SITES: | ||
| Bandcamp | - |  |
| Behance | - |  |
| Blogger |  |
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| Cowalla | - |  |
| DailyBooth | - |  |
| Delicious | - |  |
| Digg | - |  |
| Etsy | - |  |
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| Flickr |  |
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| Formspring |  |
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| FourSquare |  |
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| Github | - |  |
| Goodreads | - |  |
| Last.fm | - |  |
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| Netflix | - |  |
| Picasa | - |  |
| Posterous |  |
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| SoundCloud | - |  |
| Tripit | - |  |
| Tumblr |  |
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| Typepad |  |
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| Vimeo | - |  |
| WordPress |  |
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| YouTube |  |
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| Add Custom Feed URL |  |
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| Premium option | - | $20/year |
About.me or Flavors.me?
John Wehr, lead developer for Flavors.me pointed out in a Sept. 2010 Quora discussion that the two products play different roles. I couldnt agree more. In my mind its a matter of "sexy" vs. SEO. Youll have to make that choice for yourself based on your needs and preferences.
For personal branding, I really do lean toward the sexiness of the About.me URL. About.me is simply more to the point and self explanatory to me. I am confident that a paid version will be offered in the future, and that with this option will come advanced analytics, more options to customize appearance, and the ability to add custom meta data. This is merely an opinion of course, but certainly what I would offer were it my project. Well have to see what AOL does with this new acquisition.
From a business perspective, should one decide that having a splash page is a benefit, Flavors.me gets my vote. While it is only available to paid users ($20 US per year), the ability to control meta data (title & description) alone is enough to sway my choice for business.
Are you currently using either of these products? What is your opinion on the use of an offsite splash page for business purposes and/or SEO? I would love to hear your input in the comments.