Qwiki builds a visual search product that generates media on the fly by combining text, audio, and animated photos to create visual guides to millions of topics. The service assembles photos and spoken text from Wikipedia and other sources to present information in a highly visual way. After a private alpha launch in October, Qwiki opened to the public in January and added features to post, tweet, email, embed Qwikis, contribute YouTube videos and pictures, and provide feedback on sound quality. It also added a text-based "Contents" section that includes all information in a given Qwiki. Future plans described include expanding to thousands of additional content sources, building an iPad app, and releasing a custom publishing platform to let publishers transform their content into Qwikis. Financially, the company has raised $10.5 million to date according to the report. Qwiki builds a visual search product that automatically assembles photos and spoken text from Wikipedia and other sources to generate multimedia, narrated guides to millions of topics. The startup’s technology combines text, audio, and animated photos to present information in a highly visual way. Qwiki won TechCrunch Disrupt and recently hit No. 1 on Google Trends’ “Hot Searches” in the U.S. after news that early Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin led an $8 million investment. The company is still in private alpha and described as virtually unknown six months prior to the surge in attention. Qwiki is planning to launch an iPad app that is currently in development. The article describes the technology as potentially disruptive and a new way to consume information. Qwiki is a web and mobile application that presents data about millions of topics as narrated, visual highlight reels, letting users search for a topic and receive an audio-visual summary. Users can click sub-topics or related topics to access more Qwikis and navigate large amounts of information visually. Its data sources include Wikipedia and other sites — for people searches Qwiki can surface LinkedIn profiles and social connections. The founders are Doug Imbruce and Louis Monier; Monier previously founded AltaVista and worked at eBay and Google before joining Cuil as VP of Product. Qwiki launched at TechCrunch Disrupt and has raised $1.5 million in funding to date. The team and judges highlighted a range of potential use cases, international opportunity, and personalization (the company envisions every user having their own Qwik), and the company describes the technology as having unlimited opportunities.

Total raised

$11M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Mar 2011