The current “war” in the web space is presenting new challenges to existing players like Google. Especially with sudden surge of social media, few people doubt how Google will cope-up against Facebook / Twitter. Little we understand that both these channels play with “information” and do very little to innovate with it.

QWiki has been recently released in TechCrunch. It is an excellent and smart example of information is more powerful and impactful when it adds with an “experience”. While all other leading web players are busy in focusing on sharing, QWiki ads up a spice in presenting that information. On the outset QWiki is a natural extension of Wiki (Wikipedia) family. This tool is design to present information of any topic with voice, pictures and graphics. In short – adding human touch to information.

For an example – if you search for Steve Jobs of Apple on Google, you will get Wikipedia page showing all text information of Steve. Now imagine, your search results throw you a story of Steve Jobs evolving from a student to Millionaire owner of Apple. It also adds lot of pictures, graphics and date-range of related subjects to Steve along with background voice of a sweet-voice lady describing this as an interesting story. This is exactly what “Information Experience” can bring to you.

Though this is not designed for sourcing, recruitment etc – my brain has already started to analyze from that angle. So – this is what I see as current state and future of “Information Experience”. This might be in boundary of QWiki OR outside.

QWiki – Features

1. You need an invitation from QWiki to pen an account. Volunteer yourself for beta testing.
2. An information stored about a specific place, person OR any other popular topic along with their statistics, audio-visual presentation (like PPT).
3. Presently it contains very limited topics (no comparison to Wikipedia). The database of topics will increase in coming days.
4. A natural step ahead after Wikipedia and Wolfram-Alpha
5. Ability to share with Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn makes it a very interesting tool.
6. Extremely engaging and interesting way to convert information into story with images.
7. Millions of interesting and popular topics listed.
8. Also referencing to the source of its information on Wikipedia, Google, Flickr, YouTube etc.
9. In the end – it also shows you “related” topics to view.
10. QWiki is in Alpha testing phase currently and only open for limited usage. So it will have few very basic errors. It’s giving away T-Shirts as prize though J
11. All in all – a truly out-of-box “Information Experience”.

This is just a start! We are living in information managed world today; everything is about information. Most of our information is plain HTML / WORD text. However, what if few kinds of information can be presented with this “experience”. You will surely get that WOW! effect. Even from recruitment sourcing point of view – this has a lot of potential.

QWiki – Things we would like to see

1. What if QWiki transforms itself from a Wiki database to actual search engine? Imagine your search engine pages in QWiki way. WOW!!!
2. If we key-in any candidate name – it should be able to search related information from other sources and put it together in their current format. Awesome!!! Would not your hiring manager prefer such presentation?
3. How about presenting your job requirement to prospective candidate in this format? Candidates would be able to visualize their company, responsibilities, growth path etc. WOW!!!
4. Great tool for intelligence on your competitors to know their company information, statistics, history and any other information. (May be they can add management teams in future!)
5. I believe being in Alpha Testing – they have not used all the sources of information in full strength. It’s like Google + Wikipedia + YouTube + Image Search. It’s all about integrating technologies!
6. What if they tie up with LinkedIn / Facebook to fetch user information and create their own directory of people?

Possibilities are endless. QWiki has provided a much needed sparkle to force information (Search / Social Media) providers to think in different way and getting back to their basics. I am frankly sick and tired of hearing Google VS Facebook. Technologies needs to complement and shaking hands with one other. Innovating will keep them relatively secure from being absolute.

I am sure you will enjoy this information “Experience”…