Many digital identity aggregators like Flavors.me and About.me have tried to make web-based profiles beautiful. While both feature a large image with customized biographical data, a startup based out of Portland, Oregon called Vizify is setting a new standard for beautiful digital identity that blows Flavors.me and About.me away. Vizify pulls in data from social sites Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram to create a full story about your life on the web. The onboarding process for new users is so easy, that it takes only five minutes to complete a new profile from start to finish. If you’ve ever sat in front of a computer screen and completely blanked on what to type in the “about” section of a new social network, you know how hard it can be to seed data about yourself on yet another profile. The team at Vizify knows that you should never have to fill out another “about” section ever again. They operate according to “Zuckerberg’s Law”, which states that the amount of online data about you doubles each year. By organizing this data that is already out there and making it beautiful, Vizify gives users a central point to make a great first impression on the web. Vizify isn’t just useful from a user perspective. It also makes researching people on the web incredibly easy. As a writer, I spend a lot of time researching startup founders before I interview them to get key data points about their careers, education, and interests. Vizify makes dry data like career information from LinkedIn accessible and memorable with just a quick glance. Vizify is solving a clear problem that investors are willing to place their bets on. The three co-founders Todd Silverstein (CEO), Jeff Cutler-Stamm (CTO), and Eli Tucker (VP of Engineering) are Techstars Seattle and Portland Seed Fund alumni who have secured a $1.4 million seed round. After AOL snapped up About.me in late 2010, many tech pundits believed that the sale was too early, and that AOL would sit on the product without developing it to its full potential. It seems as though that prediction has come true, which has allowed Vizify to swoop in and develop personal data visualizations beyond their existing competitors. Vizify is now offering complementary features like a customized email signature that can be attached to your outgoing email. It’s clear that Vizify is just embarking down a road that can branch off into many useful products with the main goal of beautifying personal data at the core of the business. If Mark Zuckerberg is right about the amount of personal data on the web doubling each day, Vizify will become more useful.
