AboutUs

Type:	Private
Industry:	Internet domains wiki directory
Founded:	Portland, Oregon, USA, 9 May 2006
Founder(s):	Raymond King, eNom, NameIntelligence
Headquarters:	107 SE Washington Street, Suite 520, Portland, OR 97214
Country:	USA
Employees:	16
Website:	AboutUs.org
Twitter:	@AboutUs
Key People
Raymond King, CEO Ward Cunnigham, CTO

AboutUs is a wiki directory of internet domains. AboutUs lists domains and information about their content. Most of the content is generated automatically by web bots but information can be corrected by visitors when mistakes are spotted and/or they have something to add. If someone searches for information regarding a domain which is not already listed on AboutUs, then the website creates an automatic page of that domain with information that it manages to gather automatically. Owners of a domain can create an account and edit the page if it lacks or does not offer correct information. If the page is edited correctly, AboutUs rewards their efforts with a do-follow link to their website after it has been reviewed. Currently, AboutUs is a Page Rank 6 website.

AboutUs describes themselves as being "a wiki for and about businesses, organizations, blogs, forums, and really anything or anyone that has a website".

History

AboutUs was founded in 2005 but the actual website was created in 2006 by a group consisting of only five people from Portland, Oregon in the United States of America. Ray King, Paul Stahura, and Jay Westerdal were the people to come up with the idea. The actual launch date of the AboutUs website was May 9th, 2006.

AboutUs has enjoyed substantial growth since its initial launch. Their success was acknowledged by other important people in the business, such as Ward Cunningham, the developer of WikiWikiWeb (which was the first wiki in the world) who joined the team of AboutUs in 2007 in the position of Chief Technology Officer.

Finances of AboutUs

The initial financing of one million dollars ended in November 2006.

AboutUs also managed to bring the total amount of financing to five million dollars funding with a Series A event led by Voyager Capital in January, 2009.

Features of AboutUs

• Do-follow (following links) for fully documented pages (edited by the owner of the website, reviewed by AboutUs).

• Site Metrics for viewing the visibility of a website in search engines and social websites.

• Online Visibility Audit which is a tool that AboutUs considers as being useful for website owners as it helps them see their website as it is seen by the search engines and visitors, thus being able to spot mistakes.

Content and Popularity

Content

A big part of the data found on AboutUs was created by a bot (web robot). The rest of the data found on AboutUs comes from searches and edits done by visitors (by doing this, the web robot is directed to that certain address to collect data). Most of the pages contain information taken from the "About us" or "About me" page of a website, including self promotional text and information about that website.

One of the reasons for the success of AboutUs is the fact that promotional texts are allowed to be posted for each website. Thus, a domain owner can edit the page of his website found on AboutUs with promotional information without any sanctions. AboutUs actually encourages website owners to complete/edit the information about their domains with either commercial or noncommercial information.

Popularity

In July, 2008 AboutUs attracted about 1.4 million visitors from the United States. The record of unique visitors for a month was set in November, 2009 when AboutUs was visited by a total of 1,677,937 people. As of March 2008, AboutUs contains over ten million listed domains, with an average growth rate of about twenty-five thousand new listings daily. As of August 28, 2009 AboutUs has a total of 15,248,689 pages.

The Whois service of several websites now has references to AboutUs, excluding the usual history, domain ownership and server information. The most notable whois services that reference to AboutUs include Register.com , Network Solutions and Domain Tools.

External links

• AboutUs website

• Google Map Exterior View of the Headquarters of AboutUs

• InformationWeek magazine article regarding AboutUs

• AboutUs: A wiki about every website article written in TechCrunch by Marshall Kirkpatrick