Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

twittering: going to try a new toy tonight: brian eno's bloom iphone app. thanks to @durjoy for reminding me about it.

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Visit PageBites, originally added to eHub on Sep 30, 05.

eHub Interviews PageBites

Thanks to Ralph Harik and the rest of the PageBites team for this email interview posted October 15, 2005.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

PageBites: PageBites is a job and resume search engine. We crawl the web for both job postings and resumes. We also allow employers to post jobs on our site, and we allow job seekers to post their resume on our site. All of our services are free. If you are curious why this is different than Monster.com check out our blog: http://www.pagebites.com/blog.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

PageBites: Matching people to jobs is a challenging problem that must be solved. We want to solve this problem.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? Do you have a day job?

PageBites: We devote our full-time to PageBites, Inc. We are funded by private investors. We do not have VC funding at this time.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

PageBites: Our team is very small. We are comprised of MIT and Caltech alumni. We are looking to add other talented individuals. If you are interested in joining our small team please contact us at jobs@pagebites.com.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

PageBites: I am not sure that we have an official philosophy. We try different things out, and if something sticks then we spend time improving it. A lot of the things we do are a result of user feedback. User input is key to developing a useful product.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

PageBites: We do Linux. We do Python.

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

PageBites: So far we have had many requests for an alert system. Users want to know when new jobs/resumes have been added to our index. This is something we are currently working on.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

PageBites: Our user base is distributed.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?

PageBites: In the next 6 months we will concentrate on expanding our user base and improving our service. It’s really hard to comment on what will happen over the next 2 years. A lot of what we do will depend on user feedback.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

PageBites: One of our big challenges is letting people know about our service. Many people don’t know that we are providing free job/resume posting and free job/resume searching. Employers are still paying Monster.com lots of money to post jobs and to search resumes. Candidates don’t know that employers need to pay Monster.com to view their resume. We need help in letting users know about these things.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

PageBites: Publicity.

eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

PageBites: Our business model at the moment is targeted advertisement.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

PageBites: Our traffic is increasing.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

PageBites: The positive feedback that we have received from users is definitely what we are most proud of. Knowing that someone else has found your site useful is a great feeling.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

PageBites: Individuals are gaining more and more power by the day. It used to be that large corporations were in control because they were privy to information that the rest of us were not. The web is allowing individuals to access more information, so it is harder for the large corporations to take advantage of individuals. Information asymmetry occurs less often.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

PageBites: Gmail, Bloglines, Google Search, and Yahoo Search.

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

PageBites: Usually somewhere between 0 and 24 hours.

Thanks to Ralph Harik and the rest of the PageBites team for this email interview posted October 15, 2005.

Visit PageBites
Originally added to eHub on Sep 30, 05

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

Also see eHub Interviews in Japanese at CNET Japan

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