Top 5 Me-Site Platforms, Part 3: Re.vu

In looking for the best “Me Site” platform, we’ve already reviewed the virtual look-alikes: Flavors.me and About.me. A third “Me Site” platform, Re.vu, offers a completely different experience and presentation, and is well worth your time to investigate.

Does it have the social media content? Yup. The short bio? Yup. The impressive background image? Yup. So what makes Re.vu different from Flavors and About? A whole lot, it turns out.

But let’s backtrack for just a moment. Since we reviewed About.me, they went and upped their game overnight. Say hello to About.me Premium, with which you can now create custom domain names, remove that bothersome navigation bar (me gusta!) and integrate Google Analytics for $4/month. That strikes us as very reasonable. There are, of course, still the pros and cons of the free About.me account we discussed before (see illustration below), but this Premium option removes some of our biggest complaints.

About.me might be worth another visit but not today, Zurg! Not today because of Re.vu, that’s why!

Re.vu isn’t just a profile page with a stunning background image and a few social media icons. It’s a service that allows you to share your resume (or your story, as the homepage states) in a way that’ll make everyone want to look at it. It’s chock-full of infographics, quantifiable achievements, and portfolio work designed to make you look like a billion bucks (that’s billion with a B). Even President Obama’s jumped on the bandwagon.

Like its predecessors, Re.vu has a sign-up process that wouldn’t challenge a three year old. Once you’ve joined up, Re.vu keeps it simple and gives you a helping hand from our old pal LinkedIn. Instead of filling out your entire work history and building your resume from scratch, your information can be imported via LinkedIn, easy as pie. If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, no worries, you can go ahead and fill in the data manually (although, I’m curious to know what’s keeping you from joining the biggest professional network in the world?).

With your information imported, you’ll have completed the first two tabs — Personal Data and Timeline — in one fell swoop. Well, most of it, anyway. Updating your biography can be a good idea, just to keep things fresh and relevant, and you can incorporate your social media links under the Personal Data tab. Re.vu offers 22 ready-made links but if you find these lacking, you can add as many custom links as you’d like!

Your Timeline, you may have guessed, is where you catalog your work history. LinkedIn has taken care of the tedious stuff but, as Re.vu oh-so-helpfully informs us, there are three types of entries you can include in your timeline: current/ongoing (for the stuff you’re working on nowadays), previous timeline (for your previous work experiences) and single date (for important events in your life). Current and past work experience is quite run-of-the-mill. Single date, not so much. It’s a wonderful addition to a resume that can help explain gaps in your work history and flesh you out for a potential employer. Try adding a few non-work-related stepping stones for a little extra oomph.

The real work begins once you’ve reached Re.vu’s infographics tab. This is where those glittering graphs and pie charts are formed, but in order to do so, you must assign everything- achievements, skills, pastimes and more, a numerical value, be it a whole number, fraction or percentage.

I know, sounds annoying, but Re.vu makes this daunting task seem easy. Instead of leaving us to fend for ourselves, like with every other tab, the infographics bit comes with helpful instructions, tips, and examples to guide you. Don’t think you have any quantifiable achievements? Think again. You don’t have to be a Nobel Laureate to have done something of value, even though our dear President has one in his achievements. It can be the number of countries you’ve visited, poems you’ve written or your followers on Twitter. Just let it simmer in your head — who knows what you’ll come up with!

As you begin to make your way through this section of Re.vu, it becomes apparent that this isn’t one of those under-ten-minute Me-Sites. While it may not be ideal, it’s difficult to give it a thumbs down since the result is so worth the effort!

Yet another thing that went a long way toward endearing me to Re.vu is that they allow users to integrate their own work into the site through the Portfolio and Work Example tabs. If you’ve got work in the form of images, slides, PDFs or Word docs — anything that you feel represents your work or skills — put ‘em up there! Images are, of course, always best. You don’t have to click them to view and they’re a great deal more attractive than an icon for a PDF will ever be (though Re.vu does what it can!).

The last tab is for your Education. LinkedIn will have imported this info as well but the site allows its users to upload your school’s logo and if you can, do it! Any opportunity to make your site more visual is an opportunity to seize. Click save, and you’re done. Hallelujah!

Well… maybe not just yet.

As my page loaded, I realized there was still work to be done. I wasn’t impressed by the results so I quickly went through the floating Design toolbar to see what I could do. The toolbar allows you to change the background image, theme and the arrangement of your graphics. Customization options? I’m afraid you’ll feel the sting of disappointment. Flavors and About.me are a comparative mecca of options.

Your background image for Re.vu must be chosen with the utmost care since most of the screen is occupied by your resume. I’m afraid you’ll also be forced to do your cropping outside of the site since there aren’t any alterations allowed once your image has been uploaded. Re.vu also only has 13 themes for its users to choose from; while they’re pretty suave, they’re all stubbornly fixed in terms of color, fonts… you name it. I imagine this is to deter the infographically-challenged from making a mess of their pages but woe is me! The limitations are many.

In consolation, Re.vu has page statistics available to check out page views as well as the number of views and downloads on your resume. You can also favorite other re.vu pages (though I’ve yet to discover where these favorites are recorded. Hmm….)

Ultimately, for its unique perspective and awesome infographics, Re.vu is unique and visually stunning. Could it be better? Probably. But in the mean time, it makes you look pretty cool anyway. I mean, just check me out!