A visitor to a web site hosting one or more information services can be presented with default information from those services that is tailored to the visitor based on known information about the visitor. A profile service can instantiate a visitor profile by sending visitor identifying information to the hosted information services and amalgamating the visitor-specific defaults selected by each hosted information service based on the identifying information provided. The default selection process is thereby moved to the individual information services, which are better suited to select defaults, and thereby avoids further complexities in the profile service.