AboutUs.com is a

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

Internet domain A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

directory. It lists

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...

s along with information about their content. As a wiki, AboutUs allows Internet users to add entries or modify information. AboutUs.com has since become a wiki for more than just websites. The site now allows pages to be created for people, places, and almost anything else. Ray King, Jay Westerdal, and Paul Stahura founded AboutUs in 2006. Later in 2006 a small staff of five people in

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developed out the site. The staff expanded to more than thirty people and two continents with an office in

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

. From May 2007 to early 2011, Ward Cunningham, developer of the first

, was the chief technology officer of AboutUs. AboutUs attracted at least 1.4 million U.S. visitors in July 2008. They used to use the domain name "AboutUs.org", but moved to new site under "AboutUs.com" in May 2010. Traffic and revenue started declining sharply and in 2013 AboutUs.com and its assets were sold to Omkarasana LLC, a Colorado Limited Liability Company located in Denver. The new company has since redesigned the website, migrated its infrastructure over to Amazon Web Services, and increased visitors and revenue. There are now approximately four individuals that actively operate the site.

Website contents

There were more than ten million entries on AboutUs.com as of March 2008, and new pages are added at a rate of about 25,000 a day. Most entries were created by a

web robot An Internet bot, web robot, robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity on the Internet, such as messaging, on a large scale. An Internet b ...

(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.com does not restrict. In many other cases the content of an entry consists of the

whois WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomou ...

data for the website. As of February 2014, there were more than 20 million entries.

Data use

Some websites that analyze domains and traffic link to AboutUs.com as a point of additional reference. Notably, the "

Whois WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomou ...

" sit
DomainTools
now references the Aboutus.com 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 Register.com is a domain name registrar. History The company was founded in 1994 as Forman Interactive Corp by brothers Peter and Richard Forman and their brother-in-law, Dan B. Levine as a provider of website creation software. In 1999, the com ...

Malware domains

To prevent users from visiting malware domains, editors work with

McAfee McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American global computer security software company head ...

SiteAdvisor and PHSDL to identify such domains. Once a malware domain is identified, an AboutUs MalwareSite

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is placed to warn users.

Popularity

AboutUs.com 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. AboutUs.com 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.com, as a central point of summary information on the web.

Funding

In November 2006, AboutUs closed its initial financing round for one million

dollars Dollar is the name of more than 20 currencies. They include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, U ...

. In January 2009, AboutUs secured a $5 million funding round from

Voyager Capital Voyager may refer to: Computing and communications * LG Voyager, a mobile phone model manufactured by LG Electronics * NCR Voyager, a computer platform produced by NCR Corporation * Voyager (computer worm), a computer worm affecting Oracle d ...

.Aliza Earnshaw
"AboutUs nabs $5M infusion"
''Portland Business Journal'', January 9, 2009

References

External links

AboutUs.com
* Marshall Kilpatrick,
AboutUs: A Wiki About Every Website
" ''

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...

'', 11/14/2006. {{DEFAULTSORT:Aboutus.com MediaWiki websites Web directories Companies based in Portland, Oregon Internet properties established in 2006 2006 establishments in Oregon