Over a year ago, there was some concern expressed that AboutUs was somehow invading privacy by posting information on domain owners. When Ray and others reminded everyone that this information was freely and publicly available elsewhere, and that the goal of AboutUs was to enable the addition of transformative value to it, the objections faded.
Even at that point, however, there were some people who understood why the combination of business information and the wiki form would produce value. Here’s one reader, VC Mike, who posted a comment on a rather critical Tech Crunch post.
(I)f the traffic trends are a harbinger these guys become the de facto wiki people go to for editing or viewing info on companies, this becomes the wiki version of Hoovers, which is something I would invest in.
Now, I mention this, and quote this individual, for a specific reason. As Guest Interloper, I’ve noticed something about these AboutUs types, something no one is going to miss who spends any time at all around them or on their site: This “wiki way of life” they espouse is big picture stuff all the way. They believe in the democracy of information and everything they do furthers that aim.
The problem of course is that they’re running a company, not a philosophy department. Sometimes it’s a little hard to see how this philosophical egalitarianism is going to benefit you, the user. So I wanted to help them articulate the answer to an important question, one that lay in plain site, but had not perhaps been sharpened like it could.
What does AboutUs do as a company? And what good does it do me?
Well, it turns out VC Mike had hit the nail on the head. AboutUs is an exhaustive listing of information about companies. This information includes officers, location, contact, sector and finances. It has in fact grown into a kind of Hoovers on a wiki, a sort of “Wiki & Poors” guide. Hoovers and Standard & Poors, for those who don’t know, are both guides to business information. They are updated, and published, originally in book form, and are used by investors, bankers, journalists, sales people, marketers, vendors and anyone else who needs to keep current on businesses and business sectors.
AboutUs provides you, the user, with immediate, up-to-date information on millions of companies around the world. Whether you’re considering investing, or buying products, or selling products to, a given company; whether you need to keep current on the players in a sector or need a current indication of how the economy is going for businesses in an area, you use AboutUs to find that information.
More than that, however. AboutUs has one important quality that traditional business information resources lack. It’s dynamic. You don’t just passively absorb information, as you might from the traditional business guides. At AboutUs you can discuss a given company or topic with other knowledgeable users. You can add information about a company that you’ve gained without waiting for a publication cycle, and you can read the same kind of information build into each entry by your counterparts.
AboutUs is the largest dynamic repository of business information in the world.
I wanted to make a Hoovers/Hoover joke. Something about a drape attachment. Perhaps next time.