The Three Internet Trends
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!
-Stuff Saf Said