I told you I would be back and I brought some friends with me! Introducing the summer 2012 Quewey Qinterns!

When they're not plugging away at their computers on intern island with keystrokes as loud as baby elephant footsteps, planning ways to crash LARP games, babysitting Casey the Quewey Dog and suffering persecution for spreading Quewey love on business forums that shall remain nameless, Qinterns embark on journeys to Shake Shack. Yes, Qinterns are like no other becuase one of them has a concave chest... 

Joy McKenzie Hometown: Tallahassee, FL

School: University of Pennsylvania (graduated a month ago)

Major: Communications

Mac or PC (fully recognizing a Mac is a PC): PC

Favorite Philly Cheesesteak Place: Lee's Hoagie House. That South Street stuff is a gimmick.

Favorite Quote: "An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

Theme song to your life: On my way to Quewey: What Makes You Beautiful- One Direction; On my home from Quewey: All of the Lights- Kanye West; Drifting off to sleep; I Need You More- Jesus Culture

Guilty Pleasure: I still watch Gossip Girl without shame.

Random fact: I want to be a guest conductor of and orchestra one day. 

Alex Piasecki Hometown: Wayne, PA

School: University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Major (Undecided is an option): Business Administration and International Relations

Mac or PC (fully recognizing a Mac is a PC): MAC

Favorite Philly Cheesesteak Place: Dellasandro's or Jim's

Favorite Quote: "A man isn't poor if he can still laugh" (Raymond Hitchcock) 

Theme song to your life: Better Things by The Bouncing Souls

Guilty pleasure: Singing on Rock Band, the video game

Random fact: Speak Spanish and Catalan and travel to Europe almost every year. Have played saxophone for over 10 years

Christine Alix Hometown: West Bloomfield, MI

School: University of Pennsylvania

Major: Double major in Fine Arts (Photography) and Communication

Mac or PC (fully recognizing a Mac is a PC): Mac

Favorite Philly Cheesesteak Place: Pats, obviously.

Favorite Quote: "The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure."- Chris McCandless

Theme song to your life: Theme song? I have a soundtrack...

Guilty pleasure: Making soundtracks to my life (actually)

Random fact: I have a sushi roll named after me!

Jeff Morris Hometown: Berwyn,  PA

School: Virginia Tech

Major: Computer Science

Mac or PC (fully recognizing a Mac is a PC): PC (Linux count?)

Favorite Philly Cheesesteak Place: Tony Lukes

Favorite Quote: "So how do I know you?" -David Luk 

Theme song to your life: I remember (deadmau5)

Guilty pleasure: Might be addicted to Sun Chips

Random fact:  I have a concave chest

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Zach Greene

Hometown: Elkins Park, PA

School: Vanderbilt University

Major: Economics and History

Mac or PC (fully recognizing a Mac is a PC): Mac

Favorite Philly Cheesesteak Place: Geno's

Favorite Quote: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."--Yogi Berra

Theme song to your life: "Can't You Hear Me Knocking"- The Rolling Stones

Guilty pleasure: Sports Talk Radio

Random fact: I struggle with surveys like these

Kendall Baker

Hometown: Summit, NJ

School: UPenn

Major (Undecided is an option): Communications

Mac or PC (fully recognizing a Mac is a PC): Mac

Favorite Philly Cheesesteak Place: Pat's

Favorite Quote: If you think you have it tough, read history books - Bill Maher

Theme song to your life: Safe and Sound by Capital Cities

Guilty pleasure: Movie binges

Random fact: There are currently two movies being made about members of my family and I am a casted character in both 

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Dan Ryan

Hometown: Clearfield, PA

School: Bucknell University

Major: Biology

Mac or PC: PC

Favorite Philly Cheesesteak Place: Dalessandro's

Favorite Quote: "They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure." -Ernest Hemingway

Theme song to your life: I don't have one, so instead you get to learn that Utahraptor is my favorite dinosaur.

Guilty pleasure: Milkshakes

"Build Structure: Structure is not a dirty word to employees. In many cases, they crave it. Philadelphia-based knowledge network startup, Quewey, recently brought on a CEO and the organizational changes have been welcomed by the group. “We realized that we needed a pointed decision maker,” says Michael Magill, of Quewey's business development and finance. “A lot of day-to-day decisions come up that don’t seem like big decisions, but they really mold your strategy. At a certain point, younger workers will begin to wonder who is responsible for managing the overall direction, message, and strategy of a business.” Magill says that having a defined leader has helped people understand their roles, set the founder's vision in sight, streamline processes, and increase delegation. And projects that would have otherwise remained in the brainstorming stage actually see action."

Right now, I see three big trends in the internet: 

1. Identifying the Relevant

2. The Power of Many

3. Monetizing Excess Capacity

To be fair, the first trend enables the later two. In this blog post, I'll briefly explain what each trend means in a bit more detail. After, I'll focus on what "monetizing excess capacity" is, and how it's being shown in some of today's hottest internet companies. 

Identifying the Relevant 

As I mentioned, this first trend is the glue between the second and third. Any site from Facebook to Quewey (yes, Quewey) uses this tool. It's the ability to use a persons social profile information (demographics, connections, Likes, clicks, tags, searches, background...) to serve up relevant information (pictures, questions, users, cars...you name it!). For the most part, this is nothing new; companies have been using targeted advertising to make money for quite a while. The main example of this trend was shown in the large amount of investments going towards serving up relevant advertisements to web users. However, as technology has advanced, the pendulum has swung. Now, the goal is to have not only the most users, but also the most engaged users. So, identifying relevant content is being used to make users more engaged, and by doing so these sites are becoming more efficient and useful. After all, it's hard to squeeze out gains in advertising conversion rates. I think now it's more important to put investment dollars into not only getting the users but keeping them engaged. Using peoples social profiles we can --by 'Identifying the Relevant.' 

The Power of Many

Many new companies business models rely on the 'Power of Many.'  These models make an action happen that couldn't be done better by an individual alone.  Lets say you want a car but can't afford it. Zipcar allows you to, in essence, share a car with other people who are in your same position. Crowd sourcing decision making is another example of the 'Power of Many.' For example, Kickstarter allows many people seed a startup idea. Groupon allows for many people to group purchase to score a deal (in theory).  All of these models rely on the 'Power of Many.'  This model has been around for a while, too. Group purchasing is is no way new, but now with 'Identifying the Relevant' the Internet is pooling together like minded people more efficiently than would be possible offline. Still, there is a chicken and egg paradigm that's not easy to solve. Luckily though, viral functionality via Twitter/Facebook/Etc make it easier to find users.

Monetizing Excess Capacity

Robert Stevens, founder of GeekSquad, said that "A new frontier of the internet is to solve 'excess capacity,' such as AirBnb, UberCab, OpenTable, Groupon, etc." (I saw this in a RT by Bill Gross).  AirBnb enables anyone to rent out their home or apartment if they're not using it. DogVacay allows anybody to turn their home into a dog kennel, if they have enough space. If you manufactured too much of a certain product there are countless daily deal sites you could sell your product on.  Another very pertinent example is Quewey; we know that professionals have extra time on the side, and taking that time to make a little extra income is always an attractive option.

Coming Full-Circle

A bit more about how the idea of Quewey came about: We knew that professionals have extra time and making more income is always attractive. So, why not give people an option to monetize their professional excess time. Answering a question on Quewey has the potential of lead to a consulting engagement = making money! The problem we had to solve was how we connect the right people --the people who are ASKING a question with the people who can ANSWER that question. To do this we decided to use a LinkedIn API, which would provide us with a users resume information and would set the tone for Quewey being a professional business site. Our acquisition of Zebek, a graph search OEM technology, provided us with sophisticated backend capabilities --to analyze professionals profiles to create a smart matching and recommendation engine. Our CTO's roots are in search (all the way back to the Inktomi days). 

So: Quewey User Growth + More Activity on Quewey = Smarter Quewey Backend = Constantly Improving Quewey! 

-Stuff Saf Said

Right now, I see three big trends in the internet: 

1. Identifying Relevant Content

2. The Power of Many

3. Monetizing Excess Capacity

To be fair, the first trend enables the later two. In this blog post, I'll briefly explain what each trend means in a bit more detail. After, I'll focus on what "monetizing excess capacity" is, and how it's being shown in some of today's hottest internet companies. 

Identifying the Relevant 

As I mentioned, this first trend is the glue between the second and third. Any site from Facebook to Quewey (yes, Quewey) uses this tool. It's the ability to use a persons social profile information (demographics, connections, Likes, clicks, tags, searches, background...) to serve up relevant information (pictures, questions, users, cars...you name it!). For the most part, this is nothing new; companies have been using targeted advertising to make money for quite a while. The main example of this trend was shown in the large amount of investments going towards serving up relevant advertisements to web users. However, as technology has advanced, the pendulum has swung. Now, the goal is to have not only the most users, but also the most engaged users. So, identifying relevant content is being used to make users more engaged, and by doing so these sites are becoming more efficient and useful. After all, it's hard to squeeze out gains in advertising conversion rates. I think now it's more important to put investment dollars into not only getting the users but keeping them engaged. Using peoples social profiles we can --by 'Identifying the Relevant.' 

The Power of Many

Many new companies business models rely on the 'Power of Many.'  These models make an action happen that couldn't be done better by an individual alone.  Lets say you want a car but can't afford it. Zipcar allows you to, in essence, share a car with other people who are in your same position. Crowd sourcing decision making is another example of the 'Power of Many.' For example, Kickstarter allows many people seed a startup idea. Groupon allows for many people to group purchase to score a deal (in theory).  All of these models rely on the 'Power of Many.'  This model has been around for a while, too. Group purchasing is is no way new, but now with 'Identifying the Relevant' the Internet is pooling together like minded people more efficiently than would be possible offline. Still, there is a chicken and egg paradigm that's not easy to solve. Luckily though, viral functionality via Twitter/Facebook/Etc make it easier to find users.

Monetizing Excess Capacity

Robert Stevens, founder of GeekSquad, said that "A new frontier of the internet is to solve 'excess capacity,' such as AirBnb, UberCab, OpenTable, Groupon, etc." (I saw this in a RT by Bill Gross).  AirBnb enables anyone to rent out their home or apartment if they're not using it. DogVacay allows anybody to turn their home into a dog kennel, if they have enough space. If you manufactured too much of a certain product there are countless daily deal sites you could sell your product on.  Another very pertinent example is Quewey; we know that professionals have extra time on the side, and taking that time to make a little extra income is always an attractive option.

Coming Full-Circle

A bit more about how the idea of Quewey came about: We knew that professionals have extra time and making more income is always attractive. So, why not give people an option to monetize their professional excess time. Answering a question on Quewey has the potential of lead to a consulting engagement = making money! The problem we had to solve was how we connect the right people --the people who are ASKING a question with the people who can ANSWER that question. To do this we decided to use a LinkedIn API, which would provide us with a users resume information and would set the tone for Quewey being a professional business site. Our acquisition of Zebek, a graph search OEM technology, provided us with sophisticated backend capabilities --to analyze professionals profiles to create a smart matching and recommendation engine. Our CTO's roots are in search (all the way back to the Inktomi days). 

So: Quewey User Growth + More Activity on Quewey = Smarter Quewey Backend = Constantly Improving Quewey!