Qwiki - First impressions?

[nirajr]

Just got my Qwiki account, and played around with it for 30 mins.

First impressions: - Does not create qwikis on the fly. Has a whole load of stuff created with it which it serves to viewers. Thats the logical thing to do of course.

- Essentially, just reads out the first 3-4 paragraphs from the wikipedia page. Again logical as there's a very little chance that what you'd want to know about on Qwiki (on instinct) does not have a wikipedia page already. On instinct, all I tried looking for was personalities, companies and algorithms, and I got good quality clean output for all. Its when I wanted to stress test it was when I tried a query like "How to avoid cancer". Of course thats not a Qwiki-like topic.

Overall a great product. Makes me think - its very common sense: pick up the wikipedia page, annotate it with images and videos wherever there is a relevant context, store everything in the backend, and serve when requested.

I think its going to be huge. What do you think.

[twidlit]

Its a nice-to-have and in a very competitive market (information retrieval). it goes up against the following competitors.

a. reading Wikipedia b. searching on Google c. asking questions on social networks / forums

Its flashy and attractive but doesn't make the task more efficient and or grant obvious benefits. Might have a market in Education or Product showcase vertical but as a web consumer play? not going to be huge IMHO.

[nirajr → twidlit]

Education can be huge. It IS huge.

[twidlit → nirajr]

I agree but they are pitching it to the consumer web not educational institutions.

[nirajr → twidlit]

We're still some way off from seeing who they are pitching it to. Its more a question of having your ears to the ground and trying to understand who this can be sold to. I think that applies for any business. I am sure they'll pitch it to whoever it makes the most sense to pitch to.

[wturner]

As strictly an end user the computer voice annoys the crap out of me and makes me hate it. The concept is great but due to this one vice, I will never use it. It seriously makes me feel insane.

[nirajr → wturner]

Would agree to that, but would still use it.

[kingsidharth]

It was nice for a beta launch. But they have long way to go before they can be of any practical use.

But it's great for kids... or is it? :P

But a really nice start. Interesting things are coming up in Content Industry. Nice!

[gojomo]

I can sight-read Wikipedia faster than the voice can read to me, so that's not adding anything.

The slideshow often seems like a random mish-mash of related images and graphs, with animating flourishes that distract rather than adding information.

I thought clicking them might branch off or accelerate the voice in that topical direction; instead in most cases it's just a zoomed modal lightbox that stops the voice and offers other outlinks. Some of the infographics are wrong where Wikipedia is right; for example its report of the area of the city of Palo Alto is off by a factor of 100. If the same information were just inline, I could read/scan them faster. As it is, rewinding is harder than the same info provided in a scrolling view.

I suppose if Wikipedia has 'too many words', or if you were otherwise of limited literacy, Qwiki might be valuable. I was underwhelmed, but then again I prefer the wordiness of the NYTimes or WSJ to cable TV news, most days.

Perhaps having it be a dashboard for other info sources -- as in the founder's 'alarm clock'/wake-routine scenario at TCDisrupt -- could provide some other value... but perhaps not more than other tech that can read a block of text stitched together from many sources.

[nirajr → gojomo]

I looked at Metallica and Dylan, and looking at the Qwiki was a very enjoyable experience - way more juicier than reading. It could have gone even further if it played some tracks in the background :)