The Portland-based Vizify came out of TechStars’ accelerator in 2011 with the goal of helping everyday people turn their personal data — the stuff that’s fragmented across scores of profiles, networks and websites — into one, unified visual profile. Essentially, piggybacking on the rise of digital portfolio platforms that aim to recast how we use the resume, Vizify wants to help change how we build our identities online.
Shortly thereafter, Vizify won support from Tim Draper, Feedburner co-founder Matt Shobe and others to do that. Now, eight months from launch, with 250K users, a partnership with Twitter and a redesigned mobile experience under its belt, the startup is finally emerging from beta today with a new update up its sleeve. (This means no more “invite” code required.)
Previously, Vizify has tried to be About.me on steroids, offering users their own personal websites populated by their social data. The sites essentially Hoover data from your Foursquare, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts to create a simple profile and a “unified dossier,” if you will.
Coming out of beta today, Vizify is expanding on that experience with “Vizcards,” which are essentially bite-sized infographics about you, designed to be easy to customize and publish on your Vizify profile or social network of choice. Users can showcase their achievements, interests and quirks and help you present yourself personally or professionally online.
Again, Vizcards can be added to your bio or published on social media channels as a single graphic. CEO Todd Silverstein says that it’s an easy way for social media uber users down to the experimental novice to show what makes them tick and what matters. The team explains in detail how Vizcards work in this blog post, but, essentially, users start by choosing a topic that matters to them from Vizify’s library of subjects.
For example, take “cups of coffee” (in my case Red Bull), which allows you to share how many cups you’ve had, while enabling you to customize the mood these cups of coffee have inspired, the color and so on. You can then display these cards in a collection on your bio in a cascading, Pinterest-style layout, or on social media. In a way that’s mobile and tablet friendly.
“We think the lines between your professional and personal identity online are blurring,” Silverstein tells us. “For instance, our research with hiring managers told us that their biggest pain point was finding a cultural fit. Our vizcard prompts are designed to address that; they showcase your achievements, but also your interests, and quirks.”
More on Vizcards here.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/7Q9qvupUWtg/
