RealMee, online ID tool for dummies, closes round A

Written on September 3, 2008 – 4:35 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

The Dutch Creative Industry Fund (DCIF) is on a roll. After its recent €50,000 investment in VIDDIX, DCIF has now invested in online identity tool RealMee. The amount of funding is undisclosed, but the Dutch fund usually backs start-ups with a €20,000 to €40,000 money stack. RealMee helps people to manage their online identity by creating a profile which will show up in Google’s top results when searching for one’s name.

When I interviewed founders Roland Carpentier and Hans Helms in February, they assured me that no tricks like cloacking and linkfarming were used to push RealMee pages up in the search results. An important part of their strategy is urging users to link to their RealMee profile from social network profiles.

The service isn’t interesting for people who’ve already built a significant web presence. But ordinary people who haven’t created any web content, will gladly welcome RealMee. Moreover, the service will soon learn these folks how to take advantage of the upcoming open standards - since RealMee will start providing OpenID services. They will also suggest users new web applications (there’s your business model).

So far, RealMee has 3000 users. That isn’t impressive number, so it won’t be surprising to hear that Carpentier and Helms will use the financial injection to attract new users. I’m pretty sure they’ll ask DCIF partners Telegraaf Media Groep and Ilse Media - large media companies - to help them gaining some traction.

I hope you like that post!

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dcif, google, Open standard, openid, search engine, social network, Telegraaf Media Groep, Web content

About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

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5 comments/trackbacks to “RealMee, online ID tool for dummies, closes round A”

Sep 8, 2008: MeeID cuts through the chase: 10 lines profile
[...] now, others waste away in loneliness. There are even companies that just got started, like RealMee, which closed its series A in funding last week. A booming industry of success and [...]

By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Sep 3, 2008

Sounds like Ziki.com (http://bomega.com/2007/02/13/number-7382-on-ziki/) and Naymz.com (http://www.naymz.com/search/boris/veldhuijzen/van/zanten/790826). What is the difference?

[Reply]
By Erik Visser on Sep 3, 2008

Dit is natuurlijk een potentiele markt. Logisch dat er meerdere services opstaan die een zo’n groot mogelijk deel van de taart willen. Grote gebruiksvriendelijkheid is volgens mij de sleutel.

[Reply]
By David Petherick on Sep 4, 2008

I created my ID at Realmee to see how it works. Simple, fairly easy to set thing up, but the signup form field ‘Creation String’ is really going to confuse everyone. It has no useful explanation of what it is, or where somebody would get it from.

In addition, one important thing missing from the acknowledgment email once I’d verified my ID was my new WEB ADDRESS. That would be really useful for novices. I can easily email the address to a friend, but I need to copy the URL from my browser to know it myself! Just adding a variable to the email is all that’s needed.

The multilingual aspect is a nice touch, although slightly too subtle - it should be more obvious that you can add profiles in different languages from the start, to encourage those who speak more than one language to spread their presence online. Some of the fields regarding Tom Tom are still in Dutch, rather than English.

So it needs a little work, but the potential is good.

[Reply]
By Ronald Carpentier on Sep 4, 2008

Ernst-Jan, thanks for the coverage.

@Boris: the difference with Ziki is that we are not a people search directory, a central place where you go to to look for people. At RealMee, we focus on the de-facto people search engines, e.g. Google, and getting your website in the top organic results. Ziki uses Google AdWords to display a link to your site if you pay them 30 euro a year.

The difference with Naymz, is that it also offers a personal website service but also a reputation network on top of that, aimed at business professionals specifically. That means that specific services you get are dependent on what other people think of you and the score they give you. At RealMee, it is only about you: we are not a social network and are only about how you want to present yourself online.

Another big difference between RealMee and the two services mentioned by you is that our offering is very neutral: if you want to, you can disable our logo on your personal website. In a few weeks, you can also buy your personal domain to attach to your site meaning RealMee has disappeared totally.

@David, thanks for trying out RealMee and your detailed feedback. The ‘creation string’ is a field that we will get rid off - it’s related to a feature we are about to introduce so it shouldn’t be offered now. We’ll definately put your personal domain in the confirmation mail. I’ll also fix the copy issue mentioned. And if you have any more feedback on how we could promote our multilingual option more prominently we would love to hear it from you.

Thanks again all for your time.

[Reply]