Your real name

A nice article in the Atlanta Journal under the header “More people forgo anonymity and sign on with real name”:

“I personally don’t see why you shouldn’t be yourself,” said David Pogue, New York Times tech columnist, in an e-mail. He even wrestled “DavidPogue” back from an impostor on Twitter. “I always use my own name as my handle. If you have nothing to hide, why not?”

It signals a trend we also see and believe in. That’s why we designed our service in such a way that it enables you to control and manage your online identity in the most personal way, i.e. by hosting it under a personal domain such as www.yourname.com that also serves as your OpenID, i.e. your personal single sign-on for the Web.

Ego search awareness boost

Yesterday Google announced they will start featuring Google Profiles on the bottom of the first search results page when people search for someone on their name. Obviously, this is a huge step for their Profiles offering. Check out the following insightful posts on this announcement: here, here, here and here.

So, what does this mean for RealMee?

First of all we think this will raise general awareness around the subject of ego search. This will obviously benefit RealMee because it will make the pool of people interested in solutions for this issue larger.

Secondly, our proposition differs from Google’s on the following aspects:

1. With RealMee, you can make a personal profile under a personal domain, e.g. www.yourname.com, which isn’t possible with Google Profiles. This means a Google Profile is always Google branded whereas a RealMee profile can become completely personal without a single mention or visibility of the RealMee brand.
2. With RealMee, you choose what information and how much is available on your profile. With Google Profiles, that’s also the case but you only get featured in the search results if you move past a certain threshold of personal information.

Hence, more options for people to choose from to control what people see when they look for them online which is a good thing.

Promote yourself with the RealMee widget

We just launched a new item in the section where you can find all kinds of promotional items related to your RealMee profile: a personalised widget. Check mine out below.

You can use the widget around the Web to offer people a way to contact you. Decide if you want to show your picture, tell them where you live, offer them the possibility to leave you a message, and what size the widget has to have.

The next version will also offer an Open Social compliant version of the widget.

RealMee becomes OpenID provider

I am proud to announce that as of today, RealMee has joined the growing list of parties that support the OpenID movement. OpenID is a free and easy way to use your digital identity across the Internet. This software framework fits perfectly in our vision of an Open Web.

Today, RealMee has become an OpenID provider which means you can use your personal RealMee URL – typically www.realmee.com/number/your-name – to subscribe for or login to other websites that support OpenID. This means you need just one username and password to create your profile at RealMee which will let you use that identity across the Web. Simple and safe! And it works with personal domains (e.g. www.yourname.com) attached to RealMee as well.

We haven’t become an OpenID relying party – accepting other OpenID’s to create an account at or login to RealMee – (yet) because that would make less sense for a service such as RealMee that aims to be one of the central identity providers of people worldwide.

Please note that OpenID is still in the adoption phase and is becoming more and more popular, as large organizations like AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, etc. begin to accept and provide OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are over 160-million OpenID enabled URIs with nearly ten-thousand sites supporting OpenID logins.

New RealMee site launched!

You might have noticed it already but last week we launched a new version of RealMee.

In short, what is new in this version?

1. Redesign of whole site: homepage, edit section and profiles. The most important piece was the profile edit environment. We wanted to make it easier for you to edit and update your profile sow we went from one, tall edit page to an environment that contains multiple tabs. This should make it easier and simpler to work with RealMee.
2. Design: be able to choose from different profile designs. We will introduce more themes shortly and will also offer you the possibility to upload your own stylesheets.
3. Link personal domain: if you control a personal domain, such as www.yourname.com, you can link it for free to your RealMee profile page.
4. URL rename: you can personalize everything behind the top level domain www.realmee.com. For example, I have renamed www.ronald-carpentier.com/1/ronald-carpentier in www.realmee.com/ronald-carpentier to make the communication of my profile to others even more powerfull, e.g. in my email signature.
5. Resume module: make a resume in a format that is hResume compliant. This is a microformat which enables other webservices to use the resume part of your RealMee profile if you want to. It also means that if you have a LinkedIn profile with a resume section for example, that you are now able to import that resume into your RealMee profile because LinkedIn has also implemented hResume. BTW we already know that in some cases the import functionality gives some errors in case of LinkedIn. The cause is rooted in the fact that LinkedIn publishes some HTML that is not fully hResume compliant which can lead to errors on our side. We are looking into it right now.

Do you have any feedback? Fire away in the comments!

Make a resume that stands out

How to make a resume that stands out from the crowd? Check out this article from Robert Scoble.

His first two pieces of advice:

1. Blog and make sure to put your blog address in the email you send.
2. Include a customized video that demonstrates your skills and personality.

That sound like a perfect case for an email signature that includes a link to your personal website at RealMee conveying the skills and personality the employer is looking for. And you could even include a customized video for the job you are applying for at that moment. Robert, we couldn’t agree more.

New languages supported – 7 and counting

It took longer than expected but last week we released a number of new languages in which you can show your personal website. Currently, it is also possible to show who you are in Italian, Bahasa Indonesia, and Bulgarian. A big thanks to Federica Foroni Lo Faro, Nizar Abdat, and our own RealMee developer Maria! We already supported English, Dutch, Spanish, and German so that makes 7.

Ideas for the next languages we should release? Let us know, and better still, help out if you want eternal Realmee-fame: translating will take you 15 minutes max.

‘About me’ without ads and optimised for Google

Review in ReadWriteWeb about a nice new online identity service called MeeID. And read this comment: this is exacty what RealMee does. Optimising your personal website for the major search engines such as Google. And without advertisements on your page. BTW we will introduce the personal domain feature in a few weeks!

RealMee partners with DCIF

We are very proud to announce today (press release on our Dutch blog in Dutch only) that we have agreed on a partnership with the Dutch Creative Investment Fund (Dutch only). In the coming months we will work on the further roll out of RealMee with DCIF partners Telegraaf Media Groep, Sanoma, Veronica (Dutch only) and IDG. We will focus on further developing the functionalities and experience of the service and on growing the user base of RealMee, especially in the Netherlands.

We look forward to this new phase in our existence and are determined to make it a success for our customers, partners and ourselves!

RealMee white label proposition

I just posted an entry on our Dutch blog about RealMee’s white label proposition. Last week I presented the possibility to integrate a white label version of RealMee to a group of approx. 50 business development type of people in the ISP business. The session was in Amsterdam with Dutch attendees only so I drafted a Dutch pitch. I uploaded the slides in our Dutch blog. If anyone fancies an English version give me a shout and I will do that!

Basically, my 2-minute pitch said that the first online experience for most people is given to them by their ISP, by giving them access to the Web. A logical next step for these people would be to get their own online space. Therefore, it would be logical for ISP’s to integrate a white label version of RealMee into their service offerings. This would offer them the possibility to generate additional revenue streams.