Qwiki is a platform that creates interactive, on-the-fly, multimedia presentations of information. Its co-founders are entrepreneur Doug Imbruce

Doug Imbruce

Doug Imbruce is the Founder and CEO of Qwiki, Inc, a technology startup based in San Francisco, CA.-Early Life & Background:...

 and Louis Monier

Louis Monier

Louis Monier was a founder of the Internet search engine AltaVista. After he left AltaVista, he worked at eBay and then at Google. He left Google in August 2007 to join Cuil, a search engine startup. He was Vice President of Products at Cuil. One month after the launch, he left Cuil, citing...

, founder of the AltaVista

AltaVista

AltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google...

 search engine.

Description

Qwiki launched in alpha testing mode on January 24, 2011 after it won the TechCrunch Disrupt Award in 2010.

In January 2011, Qwiki raised $8 million in Series A financing, a round that was led primarily by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin

Eduardo Saverin

Eduardo P. Saverin is a Brazilian-born American internet entrepreneur and investor. Saverin is best known for co-founding Facebook, along with Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes...

. Other investors included Jawed Karim

Jawed Karim

Jawed Karim is a Bangladeshi German American technologist and co-founder of the popular video sharing website YouTube...

 (co-founder, YouTube) and Pradeep Sindhu

Pradeep Sindhu

Pradeep Sindhu is the Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer/ Vice Chairman of the Board of the Directors of Juniper Networks Inc. He was also the CEO of the company until 1996....

 (co-founder, Juniper Networks). Institutional investors included Lerer Media Ventures, Tugboat Ventures and Contour Venture Partners. The individual investor syndicate was arranged by New York City-based Felix Investments. On January 24, 2011, Qwiki launched its public alpha.

In March 2011, Qwiki raised an additional $1 million from Groupon

Groupon

Groupon is a deal-of-the-day website that features discounted gift certificates usable at local or national companies. Groupon was launched in November 2008, the first market for Groupon was Chicago, followed soon thereafter by Boston, New York City, and Toronto...

 and Lightbank co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky

Eric Lefkofsky

Eric Paul Lefkofsky is a U.S.-born serial entrepreneur. He is currently president of Blue Media, LLC, a Chicago-based private equity and consulting firm. In March 2011, Forbes named him one of 2011's new billionaires.-Early life:...

, bringing the total raised to date to $10.5 million.

Qwiki's future plans are to allow users to build their own Qwikis about themselves by linking to their Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

 or LinkedIn

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...

 pages.

The site also offers easy ways to share and embed the content produced. In April 2011 Qwiki released an iPad

IPad

The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...

 App version of its service. The application has an additional feature not present in the web version that lets the user browse Google Maps

Google Maps

Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...

which displays Qwiki annotations at certain points linked to content relevant to those locations. Seven weeks after launch, the Qwiki App was downloaded over 500,000 times.