Qwiki: storytelling for websearch

March’s issue of Wired has an article on the new search engine Qwiki. I was intrigued by what they said (the article was too short to give a proper idea) so I just checked it out myself.

From their About page:

Qwiki’s goal is to forever improve the way people experience information.

Whether you’re planning a vacation on the web, evaluating restaurants on your phone, or helping with homework in front of the family Google TV, Qwiki is working to deliver information in a format that’s quintessentially human – via storytelling instead of search.

Because I am a nerd, I typed a simple search term: daleks. And sure enough, a soothing woman’s voice told me the story of the daleks. Then it offered to play similar multimedia presentations related to the topic.

They are looking for Alpha testers. I just have to wonder how many did the 7 year old equivalent of a first dictionary search, with the soothing voice reading the spicy results.


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