Create A Virtual Business Card

I recently attended a conference where Victor Hernandez, a producer and journalist at CNN gave a talk about various social media tools and communities.  One in particular really stood out, About.me. This application allows you to create a sleek virtual business card.  You can upload a striking background image, write a bio about yourself and then link all (or a few) of the online communities in which you participate. This has so many applications.  I created an about.me page primarily for my professional life.  Then I did something I'd been thinking of doing for a while.  What is that you ask?  I purchased my name as a domain.  I'm no politician or celebrity but why on earth would I want anyone else to own my name online, ya know?!  Anyway, I registered the domain name and then immediately went in and pointed it to my about.me url.  Voila...business card online!

As seen on the home page for http://about.me/

Back to our tiny corner of the social web world, here's a scenario for our hobby (or cottage industry) as miniaturist. I can see a striking background photograph of one of your favorite dollhouses or miniature scenes.  Many of you have a fabulous eye and take the most beautiful photographs.  Yes, Shopping Sherpa and Mini Dork I'm talking to both of you. And after all that hard work why not show off your prized dollhouse creation before you sell it off on eBay, right? *Wink to MadforMod* Write up a quick bio (maybe you'll just copy and paste your Blogger profile) and you can add an additional smaller picture, similar to an avatar or company logo. *Nod to callsmall*  Then link your blog, your Facebook profile or page, your Etsy, your Pinterest, and your twitter accounts.  As you add accounts, it will identify your friends, fans followers from other communities who have created About.me pages so you can add them to your favorites. When you share your About.me page as a part of your email signature or your twitter profile, there are analytics to track how many visitors and from what locations are coming to check your page.  There's also a mobile app for your iPhone so you'll have your favorites with you on the go.  Activation of the auto locate function will even allow you to find out what contacts are near you. Now, I know I began this post talking about a virtual business card but as a bonus for signing up with About.me, for the price of shipping ($5.00 US) you can order a set of Moo.com cards featuring a QR code to your About.me page. How cool is that?!

I'm enjoying the application so far and thought I'd share it with you guys in case you had not discovered it already. How fun will it be taking your About.me profile and QR code cards to the next miniature show or meet-up? Check it out and tell me what you think, perhaps there are other applications, I have not considered.