In my previous post in the business section I talked about a restaurant I would like to patronise again.

I can remember roughly where it was, but I'll likely forget about it unless I accidentally pass by again. I certainly cannot remember the restaurant's name.

What if each customer was given a little card with a map pointing to the restaurant, the restaurant name, phone number and website address. And a voucher for the next visit.

A card to help customers find their way back again.

You could call this an ad. Or perhaps it's just a company having fun. Either way, I now know the name Coudal Partners.

[Link to the trailer and the full film]

Of course, I'd previously discovered their other project: Layer Tennis. But how often do you remember something on the first exposure?

I'm not sure if I missed it before (it was hard to find), but my local newspaper now has an RSS feed. Over the past few weeks, since I subscribed, I've read more local news than I ever have in my life. The RSS feed changed my behaviour.

Before we could easily subscribe to websites through RSS there was still already a huge wealth of interesting websites to devour. But it was easier to subscribe to a magazine or newspaper and get it delivered through your letterbox. Subscription made that easy.

For a while I embraced the nearest online equivalent: email subscriptions. But I found I received more product offers than original and interesting content. The hassle of subscribing and unsubscribing, and the risk of spam, also made me reluctant to give out my email address to random websites.

RSS solved those problems. And it changed the way I use the web.

These days, any website that doesn't provide a subscription feed is more or less ignored by me. I'll visit once, then I'll forget it exists. There are a couple of exceptions, but few.

That said, I'm finding myself developing websites for clients who aren't going to update their sites very often. An RSS feed in this situation would be like asking someone to subscribe to a book.

The temptation is to believe that sometimes subscription cannot be implemented.

Some temptations are bad for you.

A link to a site's about page is one of the few links new visitors actually look for. The contact page is the other one.

It's part of the language of the web, and it is so useful that people expect to find it.

Even when they are poorly written, they are usually reasonably helpful.

So this page was certainly a concern I had when setting up this site. It was actually the first thing I wrote and I am nowhere near happy enough with it. I will probably continue to revisit and rewrite it frequently. I have to, because Humte will change as it matures and I will need to reflect that.

Because I wanted my about page to be really good, I decided to scan the web for some inspiration. The first thought that popped into my head was Seth Godin. If anyone has written a great about page, I thought, it will be Seth.

fig 1: The 'about' heading is also a link. Why?

I headed to his blog and looked for the about section. What I found was an 'about' heading, but only one link under it which was his email. I pondered for a few seconds and then realised the heading was actually also a link to his about page (fig 1). hmm.

Once I found the page, I discovered its bulk was a list of his books (fair enough), with very little about him. This is the little bit tagged onto the bottom of the bio that describes him:

Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry's leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998.

He holds an MBA from Stanford, and was called "the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age" by Business Week.

Sure, his credentials are impressive, but nothing here tells me why I should care.

Oh, and his list of books is three books out of-date-date. This seems a bit strange when you consider he updates this site practically daily.

I moved on and decided to see if he had an alternate version of his biography on his official site. And there was. This one was only one book out-of-date. Basically the same copy though.

I continued to dig, and eventually came across his entry in Wikipedia. This is completely up-to-date, and is the most informative and engaging of the three pieces. Plus it is on Wikipedia which Seth doesn't control so you pay a bit more attention.

So should Seth Godin just point his about page to the Wikipedia entry?

No.

But when other people are writing about you, you don't want to just be an inferior cover of what they have said.

Contrast with them instead.

For starters that means writing it in the first person.

Of course, Seth being Seth, he does have a more remarkable version of his about page on a Squidoo lens. This is not really a replacement for a blog specific page, but it is a nice addition. And yes, he does link to it further down his sidebar. But no, I did not find it when I was looking for it. Fig 2, is a possible tweak to his page.

fig 2: A tidy up of Seth Godin's sidebar. It's designed to be more obvious. And draw a little attention to his Squidoo lens