I’ve been an outspoken advocate of Seesmic since beta simply because they seemed to have the right idea when it comes to consumer data visualization. They understand that the power of content is amplified when it’s visually compelling and can be consumed linearly. But not even Seesmic has dared to venture beyond aggregated social media for customized information.
Qwiki did. A few months ago, these guys won TechCrunch’s Disrupt competition with an idea inspired by the movie WALL-E. The pitch: type a subject or word into a search field, and their product will immediately generate a narrated multimedia presentation describing that subject or word with incredible brevity and relevance. And it works. Qwiki’s ability to whip up and deliver a narrative form of relevant information content on cue is one of those quintessentially simple, yet brilliant ideas.
Today’s customized information has become overbearing and tends to suffer from dissociative disorder as our interests diversify. We’re inundated with a plethora of random and disorganized information feeds, all fighting to distinguish themselves as unique brands and usually encumbered by further marketing and advertising from their partners. The visualization of focused, dictated audio-visual content based on text-driven media could be the first step into a new era of information distribution.
Think about your morning routine. Most of us probably spend the first hour or so of our day consuming news content before facing the world. If you’re like me, the info comes from different sources and mediums depending on where you are and what you have access to. You might listen to NPR while brushing your teeth, watch CNN while eating breakfast and read a newspaper on the subway (yes, I painted you a left-leaning East Coast dilettante).
A cross-platformed Qwiki-like interface could build your news as it relates to your preferences, relevance, location and the amount of time you have to consume the information. The technology could essentially produce a customized documentary in real-time that caters to your specific tastes and interests(a la Hunch), all on a single platform that can continue from device to device. A sort of learning RSS that presents information to you based on your needs. (*Apply the same scenario to a classroom, and you get an instant multimedia learning tool that caters to the subjects at hand using real-world information- an absolutely invaluable resource to teachers.)
This scenario would create a niche market for journalists in the field of meta-reporting. Essentially, news stories would be written in a customized way so as to tag themselves as information relevant to certain keywords, people and platforms, and link or refer to publicly-accessible content. Further, these reports would need to be styled so that they can be easily summarized, yet cogently describe and correspond with a series of media that they reference. Meta-reporters would essentially craft stories that walk a consumer through new information that exists in the cloud- a sort of human interpreter of the sights and sounds of the digitally recorded world. Yes, it sounds like a blog- and it’s not too far off conceptually- but a meta-report would be different in that you wouldn’t consciously access it, and might be cohered to another report by the interface’s interpreter. An interface like Qwiki would eventually pick up on a user’s taste and match your interests with appropriate meta-reports, then determine the depth of coverage based on benefit and availability of time. Not unlike businesses who compete for Google search results, information would be relative to what the interface will grab, so reporters would write to demographic scenarios.
For example: you want to know what’s up with the North Korean artillery attacks, but have extremely little knowledge of the conflict and about 4 minutes. A meta-report might give you a brief overview of North Korea’s contemporary history and its relationship with South Korea, and then summarize the current conflict from a news source that’s close to one you already use regularly. If you’re an expert on the topic with the same amount of time, the report would be much more in-depth: likely raw key points directly from the information’s source.
The concept behind Qwiki is fundamentally sound and totally rooted in the evolving consumer demands for information gathering and access. Give this a few months to brew, and our technological growth might align perfectly with Qwikis platform.
[...] when I wrote about Qwiki, journalism and metadata? Well apparently, there’s a thing called XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) that [...]