Wednesday, January 26, 2011

metafever

metafever

Qwiki.com = Wikipedia on Steroids

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 01:17 PM PST

If Wikipedia users are looking for a better "experience," it looks like their moment has arrived.

I talk like I'm not included. This is my moment!

With the release of Qwiki.com, a new multimedia style encyclopedia, information geeks can now view millions of photos, videos, maps and interactive material about a specific subject.

Yesterday marks the first time Qwiki is open to public alpha uses. . as mentioned on their blog, “Since we launched our private alpha in October of last year, we’ve received a tremendous amount of feedback from our private alpha users; including a truly amazing response to our mission of forever changing the way the world receives its information.”

Also, here's how they described themselves:

What is Qwiki?

Qwiki is a startup pioneering the "information experience" via on-the-fly transformation of data into rich media narratives. Our mission is to improve the way the world consumes information by transforming it into a quintessentially human experience.

What can I do with Qwiki?

To start, Qwiki covers over 3 million reference terms – including a wide variety of people, places and things. You can type in any indexed term and Qwiki will generate an "information experience" describing it.

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There's really only one way to describe this: Wikipedia on Steroids. As much as I love using the Jimmy Wales project (and always will) the bar was just raised with this new release.

Why? One reason: Social.

Yes, it's easy to copy and paste a Wiki URL into Twitter or Facebook. How much easier is it to share from one location? Guess what – on Qwiki you can.

I'm not here to talk about the latest and greatest start up and how it will "take down the big guy." Even though I have brought Wikipedia into this discussion before.

Let's take a look at why social feature bring out the good in this new information search engine.

  • Qwiki essentially acts the same as YouTube. After viewing or interacting with media, a user can (on the left tab) share whatever it is they interacted with.

  • Social options include: Post This, Tweet This, Embed This & E-mail this. Using the embed option, users will be able to place Qwiki into various forms of content. . . sort of like what Apture is trying with Wikipedia.
  • There will be the same "addictive" social experience that takes place on the likes of Facebook and YouTube – such as watching related Qwikis and keeping the information loop flowing.

I can sit here and try to explain the entire system to you, but you really need to check things out yourself. Hop on over and get a Qwiki now!

As always let us know what you think. Have you used Qwiki? If so, what do you think? And if you haven't. .  do you intend on it?

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