Lokion’s Meka Egwuekwe Launches New Site
On May 29th, a highly select group of area developers and marketing/business professionals gathered for Startup Weekend Memphis. Hosted by LaunchMemphis (a local non-profit cultivating and promoting entrepreneurship), the goal of the annual event is to take business ideas from concept to launch – in just two days.
One of the four businesses developed that weekend, CheezyWeezy.com, is the brainchild of Lokion senior architect Meka Egwuekwe and was created with the help of Lokion developers Ashley Young and Ben Summers. And after months of fine-tuning and business development, the site makes its public beta debut today.
CheezyWeezy invites visitors to “take a smile break” by viewing pictures of cute babies and children and allows viewers to rate those photos using creative interactive web tools like the “Aww! Meter.”
Meka says the idea for the site came from a conversation he had with his wife Pamela a few years ago. “Whenever we took pictures of our two daughters, they would always say, with the biggest smiles, ‘Cheezy Weezy!’ We thought it would be cool to have a place where our family and friends could share that experience. And since Startup Weekend brings together a diverse group of intelligent people for the purpose of building projects like this, I thought it was an ideal place to develop the concept.”
Site registration on CheezyWeezy.com is free and users can create profiles allowing them to upload their own cute photos (internal safeguards are in place to prevent inappropriate content and site usage). Since the beta site launched in July, it’s been rapidly gaining momentum by building its user base and signing up advertisers. In addition, Meka and his team are actively utilizing social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, and more innovative site features (including an online store) are in the works.
The CheezyWeezy team will also be hitting the Memphis festival circuit to sign up users and even upload pictures (with parents’ permission, of course). Planned stops include the Germantown Festival (Sept. 12th), the Cooper-Young Festival (Sept. 19th), and the River Arts Festival (Oct. 24-25th).
“As today’s stresses ever increase, the need to relax and take a break from the regular work day to smile also increases,” Meka said. “We hope visitors get as much joy out of CheezyWeezy.com as we’ve had building it.”
Congrats to Meka and team for a job well done!
