Qwiki Helps Turn Search Into a Playable, Interactive Experience

NEW YORK, June 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Qwiki, the New York-based technology company pioneering a new media format, today announced that Microsoft's Bing will embed millions of machine-generated Qwikis as playable, visual reference entries directly within search results.  Initially, Qwikis will be attached to Wikipedia results, with the integration eventually extending to many kinds of search results. For Bing, the Qwiki integration represents another step in a larger goal to make search more about doing and less about finding.

Qwikis are embeddable, interactive presentations combining images, videos, maps, real-time tweets and spoken narration. Along with today's announcement, Qwiki has opened access to its web-based Creator tool and unveiled an Application Programming Interface (API) for developers. The two features mark major steps toward the company's goal of having third parties create and distribute information through Qwiki's revolutionary format, with Bing joining ABC News and thousands of other Qwiki Creators that have embraced this exciting new medium.

The integration of Qwikis is part of the new Bing experience, which transforms the way people search the Web by providing action-oriented information and social recommendations. The Qwiki and Bing integration will soon expand into making additional search results available in Qwiki's trademark interactive video format.

"In many ways, search has remained the same for a decade: a familiar collection of links, text and in some cases, images," says Doug Imbruce, the Founder and CEO of Qwiki. "Qwiki sees Bing as the perfect partner to help achieve our goal of making information consumption a more personal and humanized experience.

"Search can be so much more than text and blue links. For example, with today's release, searches for 'Brooklyn Bridge' on Bing produce beautiful, interactive playable presentations that have demonstrated increased information retention. Looking ahead, Qwiki and Bing can help any content creator or web site owner help people do more through increased engagement."

The Bing integration is among the first examples of the application of Qwiki's Creator and API products, both of which were opened to the public today. The Creator and API allow any individual, company or developer to turn their content into a beautiful, interactive audio and video presentation, complete with text-to-speech voiceover or personal narration.

As the first "customer" of its own API, Qwiki won critical acclaim for the auto-generation of millions of reference Qwikis upon their debut in 2010. Qwikis originally were featured on Qwiki.com (www.qwiki.com/reference) and within the Company's popular iPad application (voted among the year's best by Apple), which reached the million-download milestone in months after launch. Now, the power of Qwiki is exposed to Bing's hundreds of millions of users.

For more information, please visit www.qwiki.com and www.bing.com/community.  

About Qwiki
Qwiki (www.Qwiki.com) is a New York-city based startup pioneering an easy-to-create new media format. The company won the 2010 TechCrunch Disrupt Cup, was named the No. 1 iPad reference app of 2011 by Apple and to date has raised $10.5 million in funding from the founders of Facebook, YouTube, Groupon and Greylock Partners. Qwiki recently re-located its headquarters from San Francisco.

SOURCE Qwiki