And web site guide — AboutUs domain

Ray King has launched AboutUs in beta mode.

I first met Ray King at a search engine conference a couple years ago. King is former CEO of SnapNames. When I met him he talked regarding his plans for AboutUs, but kept most of the details under wraps only saying it would be an enhanced Whois. King recently launched AboutUs in beta mode.

So what is it? It’s an enhanced web site and domain name guide with details regarding the owner, content, and related sites. (The site is set up as a Wiki — King is a wiki fan and the guy behind ICANNwiki.com.) For example, you can see the profile of domainnamewire.com here.

Each site profile includes a description, languages, address of the owner (from Whois), related domains (apparently a list of domains linked to by the site), a thumbnail, and Google map of the location of the site (also using info from Whois).

AboutUs has pre-populated info regarding thousands of sites, apparently by spidering the sites and Whois records.

Will AboutUs take off? It’s hard to say. It seems like it will need to hit a critical mass of web sites. It will have to become the place people go to learn more regarding a site — bypassing the usual suspects like Alexa — in order to get people to update their profiles. It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, but only time will tell.