• by Derek Gordon , November 8, 2010

When I first began my career in marketing, I was working for a nonprofit, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation / Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation.  Back then, before the passage of the historic Ryan White CARE Act, which finally made possible formal federal funding to fight the pandemic nearly ten years after the first person was diagnosed with the disease, the only tools available to us were word of mouth, education and the dedication of a number of extraordinary individuals determined to tell the stories of the unfolding disaster.

I was reminded of those dark early days of the AIDS pandemic recently after receiving an invitation to participate in the Alpha of a new search-like engine, Qwiki, that relies on story telling to deliver search results.  Just prior to receiving that invitation, I'd been reading the news that former colleagues of mine would be honored as part of the 20^th anniversary celebration of the passage of the Ryan WhiteAct, so it was the first thing I typed into the search box.

What I got was a concise, accurate and engaging explanation and history of the legislation. I was transfixed.  (And yes: I get the irony in writing about a sexually transmitted disease and a search engine called Qwiki...)

What's awesome about Qwiki is that it responds to that basic human instinct for story-telling.  Since before Socrates, people have relied on stories to educate, inform, entertain and inspire.  Qwiki draws on a number of sources for the information it delivers, including Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube. An electronic female voice tells you the story of the query you enter using Wikipedia as its script. 

As the Qwiki narrator tells a story, the engine presents photos, available video, and even PowerPoint slides to illustrate it.  I've tried to stump it with a few esoteric entries, but it seems able to respond to a pretty wide range of queries.  One glaring omission is for Qwiki itself, as reported by TechCrunch last week.  I guess because Qwiki is so new, there's nothing in any of its usual sources to tell its own story.

Qwiki is the winner of this year's TechCrunch Disrupt competition, and it's gotten a fair amount of hype from the usual corners.  And I suppose I should also say the obvious: this is not a Google-killer.  But it does bring a promising new dimension to the realm of search.

The company has done a beautiful job with page design and interaction; in a world that encourages hyper-fast multitasking, Qwik literally causes you to relax back into your seat as the story unfolds.  It's a little like settling in for a one-minute mini-movie.

So what might be the practical application and monetization scheme of Qwiki?  Let's stay with the story-telling metaphor.  My first marketing job in Silicon Valley (I hope you're enjoying this little tour of my career) was at one of the original e-learning companies called DigitalThink. One of our biggest challenges was how to create a Socratic-like environment leveraging everything that preceded e-learning and everything we were discovering with the advent of the Internet. 

Then came Google, and the concept of just-in-time / just enough learning, which radically reduced the need for formal e-learning efforts.  By the time I had moved on to join Technorati, Wikipedia and crowd-sourced knowledge management had emerged, together with YouTube and always-on video.  Still, a means to knit disparate sources of information together in a way that honors the human instinct for story-telling has been missing.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying Qwiki has the potential to be a great learning tool.  As it is refined and improved, it could also be useful in corporate training programs.  And given Qwiki's curatorial instincts, it could be useful in arts or historical settings.  In short, it takes the concept of just-in-time knowledge acquisition to a new level. 

When Apple introduced the touch screen for the iPhone, iPod and iPad, I had a sense that the company had tapped into something deeply human, something primal in our tactile nature --  why those products were all instant hits, at least in part. Qwiki seems to have some of that going for it, too, since it draws on our human instinct for telling stories It's worth giving a try.

I'm now able to extend invitations to others who'd like to give Qwiki a try, so let me know if you'd like me to sign you up -- just email me your email address and I'll get you added.