After reading “About Matt” on wherethehellismatt.com and the week five piece Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web by Mark Bernstein (particularly the chunk on mission statements/”About this site” pages) I decided to take a look at some other “about” pages.
I started with Wikipedia. The Wikipedia “about” is very wordy and takes the same format as a standard Wikipedia entry. Although the format may be somewhat in line with the brand, it isn’t particularly compelling. My eyes started wondering almost instantly, and I noticed a link to the “Wikipedia” entry on Wikipedia. It seems that the first page is company produced content that cannot be edited, and the actual entry is a more standard Wikipedia entry that, I would assume, can be edited by users — although the difference between the pages isn’t clear. From the second page, you can link to articles on some of the important Wikipedia people, including Jimmy Wales (founder or co-founder, depending on what you read).
I then popped on Craigslist. The about page for the founder is pretty traditional and not very flashy (like the brand), but you do get a real since who Jim Buckmaster is. There’s a face behind the brand, a personality to explain the brand’s direction and choices. Plus it seems like there is someone to trust — and someone to hold accountable should things go wrong.
From there I went to Google. Both the Google management and overview pages are totally corporate (read: dull, resume-like) save one bit about how Larry Page once made made a printer out of Legos. Still, I didn’t expect such a business-y tone from a company that claims to be breaking the corporate mold.
I did, however, find the ten things page refreshing, relevant, and interesting — especially number three (Fast is Better Than Slow) and six (You can Make Money Without Doing Evil). It gave the company a personality and that oh-so-attractive transparent feel. Note the asterisk after “new products” under number two and read the corresponding footnote (Full-Disclosure Update). I love this. They could have very easily changed their page to suit their changing company profile and maybe a few people would have felt insane for thinking they read something that doesn’t appear to ever have been there, but that’s it. Instead they made it public that a change was made and explained why they made it. More points for transparency!
This got me thinking about an article I read on nytimes.com on celebrities hiring people to write blogs and Twitter for them. Although I’m not personally invested in any celebrity enough to read their blog or follow them on Twitter, I remember being infuriated few years ago when I found out a friend of mine was responsible for a famous musician’s blog and responding to fan mail as the star. It wasn’t the particular case that made me mad, it was the principle. You have to be able to trust online sources, and I think this is what makes personal-feeling “about” pages so attractive. You see the person behind the page and are more comfortable putting your trust in a website that someone has put their name, face, feelings, quarks, etc. behind.
