AboutUs.org

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AboutUs, Inc.

Type	Private
Founded	2006
Founder	Ray King
Headquarters	Portland, Oregon  United States
Revenue	unknown
Employees	32
Website	www.aboutus.org
Alexa rank	<1000
Type of site	Wiki Web directory
Advertising	Google AdSense
Registration	Optional
Available in	multilingual
Launched	May 9, 2006 (2006-05-09) (3 years ago)
Current status	active
Screenshot Screenshot of aboutus.org home page

AboutUs.org is a wiki Internet domain directory. It lists websites along with information about their content. As a wiki, AboutUs allows Internet users to add entries or modify information.

Ray King created AboutUs with a staff of five people in Portland, Oregon, United States. The staff has since expanded to more than thirty people and two continents with an office in Lahore, Pakistan. In May 2007, Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, joined AboutUs as its chief technology officer.

AboutUs.org attracted at least 1.4 million U.S. visitors in July 2008.^[1]

Contents 1 Website contents 1.1 Data use 1.2 Malware domains 1.3 Criticisms 2 Popularity 3 Funding 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Website contents

There are more than ten million entries on AboutUs.org as of March 2008, and new pages are added at a rate of about 25,000 a day.^{[2] [3]} Most entries were created by a web robot (bot); web searches by users direct the bot to create a page for a web domain. In many cases the content is simply a republication of the contents of the "About us", "About me", or similar page on the website. Such pages typically describe the entity that owns the site, and may include self-promotional information, which AboutUs.org does not restrict. In many other cases the content of an entry consists of the whois data for the website.

[edit] Data use

Some websites that analyze domains and traffic link to AboutUs.org as a point of additional reference. Notably, the "Whois" site DomainTools now references the Aboutus.org listing along with standard server information, domain ownership and history, and additional data. AboutUs has also referenced whois data content from the registrars Network Solutions and Register.com.^[4]

[edit] Malware domains

To prevent users from visiting malware domains, editors work with McAfee SiteAdvisor^[5] and PHSDL^[6] to identify such domains. Once a malware domain is identified, an AboutUs MalwareSite template is placed to warn users.^[7]

[edit] Criticisms

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (February 2009)

AboutUs has received some criticism from within the blogosphere, mostly focusing on issues concerning the data AboutUs publishes within its pages for domain names. This is due to the fact that the website scrapes and re-presents information and website content surrounded by advertising. Posing as a justifiable website, aboutus.org has ruffled the feathers of webmasters who object to having their original content re-published under the guise of "public domain".

Privacy

Some website owners^[who?] object to the publication of the contact information for the website owner or domain name registrant. Although this information is publicly available from other sources, AboutUs makes it available in a searchable format, making it more easily accessible to the public. AboutUs has responded to this criticism by discontinuing its former practice of rendering phone numbers in text format, and by rendering the phone number of the registrant in an image format instead unless it is an older entry, in which case these numbers will still be rendered in plain text. However, other personal information, including names and addresses, are still displayed in plain text, making them available to anyone, including bots, without the express permission of the site owner.

Republishing

Website owners^[who?] have also reacted negatively to the AboutUs practice of republishing copyrighted contents from 'about us' pages. AboutUs.org takes an image and sampling of random text and republishes it. AboutUs.org rationalizes this practice by saying Google and Alexa do the same thing, by extracting a part of a website for publishing in a search. AboutUs.org is an example of a Web Scraper in that material is copied from existing websites in order to generate content for the harvesting site. This initial method of populating its pages does not constitute a Wiki because this data is not being manually entered. This kind of automation can lead to plagiarism and legal issues with regard to breaking the terms and conditions of harvested sites.

[edit] Popularity

AboutUs.org is an open directory, and does not restrict website owners from writing in their own comments, or referencing commercial information that is not necessarily notable; webmasters are permitted to engage in self-promotion in terms of highlighting their website's features.

Wikipedia is another popular website, open to human editing. However as an encyclopedia it is not a place for webmasters to inform others about their own website, as they do not all meet the notability criteria of an encyclopedia.

AboutUs.org fills the gap for webmasters by encouraging the posting of information about all websites regardless of notability or commercial interest.

Because of the open editing policy, and inclusion of commercial sites, it has grown rapidly in its content. It is also popular among webmasters or website owners seeking to include their "about us" information on AboutUs.org, as a central point of summary information on the web.

[edit] Funding

In November 2006, AboutUs closed its initial financing round for one million dollars.^[8]

[edit] See also

• Open Directory Project
• Alexa Internet

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• AboutUs.org
• Marshall Kilpatrick, "AboutUs: A Wiki About Every Website," TechCrunch, 11/14/2006.
• "AboutUs.org gets $1 million funding - excuse me?," CenterNetworks weblog entry, 11/14/2006.
• "AboutUs Launches a Business Plan; I'm Still Not Sold," CenterNetworks weblog entry, 01/10/2008
• "AboutUs.org - Is it Ethical?," Ajay - On the Road called Life! webblog entry, August 25, 2006.
• Information Week article from 2007-01-27