Flavors.Me is about simple, yet unique, personal pages. A place online that acts as a calling card for you and everything you do. At its core the site is an aggregator, pulling into one place all your content from all over the web, and it has been described to in complimentary terms by many web commentators. ReadWriteWeb said of Flavors.Me, "10 code-free minutes to a sexier web presence." While Lifehacker went with, "A simple and elegant personal portal."
The concept is basic, but there is something about Flavors.Me pages that gives them an edge, there is a certain coolness about them. If they were a high school kid they'd be the eccentric loner, the marginally anti-establishment, possibly dangerous, definitely attractive misfit admired by geeks and immune to the whims of malevolent jocks. These pages, when created with care and a little bit of creativity, are groovy. If you want to get a taste for what is possible here are three from the directory of users that nabbed my attention and demanded I investigate further.
Top 3 Flavors.Me Pages That Intrigue
Marcel Leal
http://flavors.me/mcel#_
Three kooky creatures, all with a different look of mischief, attempt to entice you in to Marcel's page, and in my case they were successful. Marcel is an illustrator of some considerable talent. A scan through his deviant art account will demonstrate this to you fairly conclusively. He's currently working freelance, and considering the standard of the work you'll find in his online portfolio (accessible through his Flavors.Me page); I imagine he's quite busy...
The Japan Lovers
http://www.thejapanlovers.com/
Ok, I'll admit that I was drawn in to the Japan Lovers page by the 3D effect and leather jackets. Nevertheless I was pleased I did, finding the page of a 'Rock and Love Duet' can never be a bad thing. The text on the page is pretty much impossible to read due to a semi-psychedelic colour clash, but I'm a forgiving sort and any band that list Hole as an influence is worth a bit of time. There's a music box on the site that gives you a few of their tracks and links to buy their merchandise. There is also plenty of the other sorts of things a modern band needs; MySpace, YouTube and Flickr, all of which are pretty hip.
Peter Warren
http://flavors.me/pbwarren#_
Whoa! This is freaky, and that's why I clicked on it. I can't resist. Sort of a gorilla with a dog shaped face, human eyes and wearing headphones... brilliant! The beast is sporting a definite enticing menace, certainly part of the charm. Peter is a screenwriter and playwright, having recently graduated from the Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU-Tisch. The gorilla-dog image it seems has limited relevance to the man himself, at least if it does, it is not apparent. If you fancied contacting him about it though, you can as all his socialness is available. He's got his little ideas (Twitter), big ideas (Tumblr), things he's watching (Netflix) and things you can watch (YouTube) all of which is entirely engaging.
Are you an online social butterfly running out of room on your business card? If so I'd highly recommend adding them all into a Flavor.Me page and uniting them under one URL. You can see the potential above; why not grab a personal home page all of your own?
David James researches and writes about social media and networking topics for the novelty Christmas gifts retailer Find-Me-A-Gift.co.uk