HostDime has been looking for ways to organize our multiple online profiles scattered across various services, including our Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and Twitter. You probably understand how difficult it is to keep an eye on each of your several accounts on the internet. One of our social media goals was to find an online service that will solve our problem by pulling all of this information together to build a single online identity. Think of it as an ‘eBusiness Card’ that will inform your visitors about you within a short summary and also link them to every network that person is connected to online.
HostDime’s marketing team decided to experiment with several Online Aggregation Services and came up with four very useful tools that will provide a base for your online personal identity:
Flavors.me
If you are looking for a more creative and artistic service offering more options to create your personal layout, flavors.me is your best bet!
Flavors.me provides more options than most of its competitors. We had a lot more fun designing the layout of our page. The social media streaming pop-up was a lot more attractive since you’re allowed to customize it, and Flavors offered a lot more social network streams.
In order to gain extra options through Flavors.me, you would need to pay a yearly fee of $20. It was very difficult figuring out how to navigate their dashboard control panel at first, but we got the hang of it after playing around with it a few times. Since they focus on targeting the more creative audiences, they should have allowed us to freely reposition the layout on our own; however, they only limited us to three average-looking layout designs.
We wanted all of our links (i.e. the link to HostDime’s website) to open on a separate tab or window, but Flavors didn’t give any options for their links. You also can’t design your own custom Flavors icon (Flavicon), that is usually located next to your URL, unless you pay for their services.
About.me
Like Flavors.me, About.me is characterized by its one-page user profiles, each with a large, often-artistic background image, and abbreviated biography.
When comparing About.me to Flavors.me, the first thing that came to mind was the old rivalry between Facebook and MySpace. Flavors.me might give you the freedom to creatively design your page, but the simplicity of About.me turns your profile into a more professional personal hub. The aggregated service is free and also has a very quick registration. Another competitive advantage of About.me is that it provides you with your very own personal analytics dashboard that allows you to see how many views, clicks, and links are linked back to you (something Flavors charges $20/year for).
Even though the streaming pop-ups aren’t as attractive as what Flavors offers, they are surprisingly cleaner and more organized. You can also include a limited amount of social media icons, so that your visitors will recognize your streaming pop-ups. A major advantage of About.me would have to be the free personalized business card they offer, with $5 shipping fee, once you register for an account.
When using About.me, I found the system to be a bit slower than the other platforms and also not as customizable as Flavors.me. The website might be a little more professional, but it sure doesn’t look as pretty. Also, if you specifically want to stream your Facebook Page, you aren’t able to create a streaming pop-up; only a link that will send you to that site.
Zerp.ly
A very visually appealing single URL through which you can not only access all of your accounts, but also build a creative online Resume (Nicer than your average LinkedIn resume). However, Zerp.ly supports a different design layout and control panel than About.me and Flavors.me.
Zerp.ly is a very attractive way to present an extended resume within your aggregated hub. You are able to connect your resume from LinkedIn to Zerp.ly in three seconds with just one click of a button! If you are currently job hunting, there’s nothing better than providing the interviewer with your zerp.ly/address so that he can view your extended resume online. Not only does it serve as an eResume, but it also connects your visitors to your other social networks. Zerp.ly offers a free, automatic mobile version for your site already designed for you and ready to go.
Unlike About.me and Flavors.me, Zerp.ly doesn’t allow any streaming for Social Networks while remaining in your aggregated hub. Also, it is less customizable with currently only four templates, all of which are pretty decent; however, we would have much rather designed our own layout.
UPDATE: Zerp.ly has contacted us letting us know that they do plan to offer more templates soon.
UnHub
UnHub is not customizable like the other three aggregated services; it simply directs others to your profiles, photo streams, channels, etc with a persistent bar at the top of your screen.
The major advantage of UnHub is that you are able to access your multiple social networking sites, your blog, website, and even your portfolio without abandoning your UnHub Link Bar. It’s completely free and offers more innovative versions of some networks (i.e. the twitter tab opens up a new streaming tool called ‘tweetree’).
If you love to follow up with the number of views and clicks that are linked back to you, you will be obsessed with UnHub Analytics. The UnHub Link Bar also displays value added info about the page itself, such as number of Diggs, bookmarks on Delicious, and clicks on bit.ly. They don’t just offer any typical Link Shortener like bit.ly or owl.ly. If you type unhub.com/ in front of any URL and hit enter, the URL is shortened automatically, and your UnHub Link Bar appears at the top of the page you’re sharing; even if it gets forwarded or retweeted.
Instead of allowing you to create a customized social media link, they only offer a limited amount of specific icons and leave you with a less attractive ‘Other’ icon whenever you can’t find the one you desire. Some of the social networks don’t allow you to stream, specifically Facebook, which than forces you to abandon your UnHub Link Bar in order to view that precise page. You also aren’t able to design, personalize, or even change the color of the bar except for your Username on the top left and the order of the links within your Unhub Link Bar.
Our Findings
All in all, as the HostDime Team, we believe that UnHub happen to be exactly what we were looking for. Not only is it a single URL through which you can access all of your accounts, but it also allows you to surf through your links without leaving your hub. They are all great sites, each with different benefits, so it’s probably just a small matter of preference in relation to which platform people choose to use. As we mentioned in both, our Social Media Workshop and Domain Registration Workshop, it is extremely important to create a ‘Hub’ to connect all of your social networks together in order to build a single online identity.
If you find any other useful sites like the ones we provided in this blog, please feel free to let us know by tweeting us, posting a comment on our Facebook, or even leaving a comment in the box below.
Hi!
Great post, nice to see a comparison of different sites.
I did want to point out one error in your section on about.me. All of our features are free, there isn't a membership or upgrade option.
Thanks!
Laura
Hey Laura,
Thank you pointing out our error. We just updated our blog.
HostDime
Thanks for the post. A little FYI, Zerply will be adding more themes soon. We also, at the moment, have no premium features.
Hey Eliza,
We apologize for the errors. We have just updated our blog. Thank you for your feedback!
HostDime