AOL has purchased four-month-old Silicon Valley start-up About.me just four days after launch.

What does About.me offer?
The site allows users to create an attractive splash page pulling together information from social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and Twitter. There’s also a personal analytics dashboard so you can track how many people are looking at your profile and where they come from.

The concept taps into an increasing desire to have more control over our online profile and present it in a more appealing way than platforms like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, with their limited design options, allow.

Why the quick sale?
The start-up had already received funding from investors including AOL Ventures, the portal’s venture capital arm. Serial entrepreneur and co-founder Tony Conrad was made a special advisor to AOL after they bought out his last company, Sphere, so is seen as a safe pair of hands.

Moreover, he’s behind the sale of Oddpost to Yahoo!, on the board of directors at Automattic and is part of True Ventures…who also invested in About.me.

What’s in it for AOL?
As Tony Conrad explains in his blog, ‘As the business model of the oldest and one of the most venerable internet businesses evolves, About.me becomes an important piece of their strategy to reach across and engage the web.’

A big part of this has been AOL Ventures, which focuses on investing in new web companies, particularly in content, advertising, local/mapping, paid services or communications.  It’s been snapping up start-ups like SocialThing (now under AOL Lifestream), 5min, Thing Labs, Brizzly and of course TechCrunch.