TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki appears to be shifting its focus, from a web-based creation tool to mobile-only.

For background, Qwikis are essentially multimedia presentations, complete with narration. In May, Qwiki announced a new Creator platform for publishers and bloggers that’s used by ABC News and others. And in June, the startup debuted a partnership with Microsoft where Qwikis are embedded into Bing results, and can be played directly inside the search page. Qwiki also offers an iPad app, which has seen 1 million downloads to date.

According to the startup’s site, after Qwiki saw the response to the iPad app and started experimenting with the creation tool and the Bing integration, the company realized that users favored mobile over web. So Qwiki has now built a new experience exclusively for the iPhone. And the web app will be transitioning into a pro tool with details to be announced soon.

From Qwiki’s site, “We hope you’re excited about Qwiki for iPhone. The app combines our expertise in media automation and iOS development into a product that we believe represents the future of storytelling.”

We contacted co-founder and CEO Doug Imbruce, who told us, that “Based on our existing success on iPad as well as user demand it makes complete sense to focus the majority of our efforts on creating the best mobile experience possible. Our iPhone app is over a year in development and with our increased focus will hopefully be an absolutely exquisite experience for all iPhone users. More than anything else it fulfills on Qwiki’s promise of automated media generation, and I believe moves our consumer product from novelty to extreme utility.” He says that the app should be released in a month.

Qwiki has raised $10.5 million from investors including Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Greylock Partners, and Lightbank.

As we’ve written in the past, Qwiki’s vision is to present a new kind of information experience beyond just packaging existing content; and clearly part of this plan focuses on mobile platforms. It looks like we’ll be seeing more details about what Qwiki has up its sleeve soon, so stay tuned.

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A couple weeks ago, Qwiki CEO Doug Imbruce came by my office to talk about his new iPad app (watch video below), but he wasn’t quite ready to show it. This morning it finally hit iTunes, where you can download it for free.

In many ways, Qwiki was made for the iPad because it is like a visual Wikipedia. Even when the startup won TechCrunch Disrupt last September, it was already working on an iPad version of its multimedia search/information consumption service. It is so much better on the iPad, where the narrated animations come to life and become swipeable. But the best part of the new app are the maps. You can see any entries pinned on a map for any location, or find places near you that have Qwikis.

When you are done watching, you can share the Qwiki via email, Twitter, or Facebook. It also suggests related Qwikis, and links to more information and images on Wikipedia, Google, Fotopedia, and YouTube. As Qwiki expands the data sources it pulls from to create its automated info-animations, it is not too hard to imagine how Qwiki can move well beyond the Wikipedia-based entries which dominat eteh service today.

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Ever since Qwiki won the last TechCrunch Disrupt in September, it’s been working on an iPad app. In fact, one of its overexcited developers showed me a peak back then. Well, it’s come along way since then, and Qwiki is currently working on the finishing touches before submitting a real app to the iTunes store sometime in the next few weeks.

Qwiki founder and CEO Doug Imbruce dropped by my office today to give me a preview. Of course, I tried to get it on video, but he wouldn’t show me a demo on camera. But he did talk about it, and you can see what the main screen looks like in the video above.

In many ways, Qwiki was built for the iPad. It is an information consumption service that animates Wikipedia text-to-speech summaries with images and photos from across the Web. The user interface naturally lends itself to swiping through the animated Qwikis and taking “information consumption off the desktop.”

The iPad app will also have “a very interesting geography feature,” Imbruce hints. I’ll let you guess what it is. But Imbruce is a big believer that “location is one of the most important signals of the next decade.” Given the recent $1 million investment in the company by the founders of Groupon (estranged Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is also an investor), perhaps Qwiki can find a way to tap into its rich database of local businesses and local Groupons. (Wait, is that the beginnings of a business model I see?) Imbruce also talks about why he moved the company from New York City to San Francisco (recruiting engineers).

And just for fun, let’s see that backstage video from Disrupt of the original iPad prototype.

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TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki is on a roll. The visual search startup raised $8 million earlier this year from a number of well-knowninvestors including early Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. And today, the startup is announcing that it has received $1 million in new funding from Lightbank, the investment fund of Groupon co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky. This brings the company’s total amount raised to $10.5 million.

What makes Qwiki so compelling is its ability to generate media on the fly that combines text, audio, and animated photos. It presents information in a highly visual way, assembling photos and spoken text from Wikipedia and other sources to create visual guides to millions of topics.

Brad Keywell, Co-Founder of Lightbank, said in a release: Doug and the Qwiki team are solving a real problem with a technically innovative and scalable solution that applies to multiple verticals. We are looking forward to working with them as they accelerate the expansion of their business.

After launching in private alpha last October, Qwiki opened up to the public in January of this year. New features include the ability to post, tweet, email or embed Qwikis, the opportunity to contribute content such as YouTube videos and pictures to Qwikis as well as give feedback on sound quality, and a text-based “Contents” section that includes all the information in a given Qwiki.

In its next version, Qwiki plans on expanding to thousands of other content sources, building an iPad app and eventually releasing a custom publishing platform which will allow publishers to transform their own content into a Qwiki.

Startups interested in applying to launch at TechCrunch Disrupt can apply here. The deadline is April 3.

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TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki launches publicly at 12pm PST today after a week filled with the news, most notably that of an $8 million funding round led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and YouTube founder Jawed Karim. Qwiki, for those of you who haven’t been following the hype, basically reads heavily Wikipedia-sourced articles out loud with photo and video accompaniments.

Heralding itself as an “information experience,” Qwiki has about 3 million reference topics at the time of its launch and hundreds of thousands of users according to a release. In testament to its success building buzz pre-launch, it was “spoof” cloned over the weekend using only 321 lines of code.

New features in the public alpha include “Share” or the ability to post, tweet, email or embed Qwikis, “Improve this Qwiki” or the opportunity to contribute content such as YouTube videos and pictures to Qwikis as well as give feedback on sound quality, and a text-based “Contents” section that includes all the information in a given Qwiki.

Qwiki plans on expanding to thousands of other content sources, building an iPad app and eventually releasing a custom publishing platform which will allow publishers to transform their own content into a Qwiki.

Created by Doug Imbruce and Louis Monier, the caliber of the Qwiki team is one of the primary reasons it has received so much traction pre-launch, as CTO Monier is the founder of one of the web’s original search engines, Alta Vista.

Says Monier about his latest endeavor, ambitiously, ” “Qwiki is not search – it’s a new media format and a groundbreaking method of consuming information.”

Here’s an embed sample and video of their TechCrunch Disrupt demo, below.

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Buoyed by news that early Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin led an $8 million investment in the startup, TechCrunch Disrupt winner and visual search startup Qwiki has hit no.1 on Google Trends ‘Hot Searches’ in the U.S. That’s a pretty impressive feat for a startup that was virtually unknown six months ago. And the company is still in private alpha.

What makes Qwiki so compelling is its ability to generate media on the fly that combines text, audio, and animated photos. It presents information in a highly visual way, assembling photos and spoken text from Wikipedia and other sources to create visual guides to millions of topics. The startup’s technology is no doubt disruptive and could become a completely new way in which we consume information.

Qwiki is planning to launch an iPad app, which is in the works.

Below is a video of Qwiki’s first demo at Disrupt.

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TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki has closed its $8 million series A financing, which I first reported a couple weeks ago when it was midway through the round. Now we know the investors, and it is a very interesting group. The largest investor who led the round turns out to be Eduardo Saverin, the early Facebook co-founder who was pushed out of the company but walked away with enough shares to make him a billionaire. Saverin watched Qwiki’s demo at Disrupt streamed over the Internet from Singapore, where he now lives.

Saverin reached out and met with the founders, and they clicked.

Joining Saverin in the round is Jawed Karim (the third co-founder of YouTube and an investor in Qwiki’s previous $1.5 million seed round), Pradeep Sindhu (the co-founder of Juniper Networks), the Greylock Discovery Fund (which is run by Reid Hoffman), Lerer Ventures, Tugboat Ventures, and Contour Ventures. (Felix Venture Partners, which was mentioned in a related SEC filing, is creating a pooled fund for some of the individual investors).

It is telling that a hot startup like Qwiki went with a wealthy individual as a lead investor instead of a venture capital firm. The funding is extremely founder-friendly, with Qwiki management retaining full control over the company. No voting board seats were given to any of the investors. However, Saverin will get an observer seat on the board. (The voting members of the board are co-founders Doug Imbruce and Louis Monier, along with the primary seed investor Bobby Yazdani).

A lot of the excitement around Qwiki is because of its ability to generate media on the fly that combines text, audio, and animated photos. The company is still in private alpha. Now that it has closed its round, the next steps are to open up the service beyond the alpha and launch an iPad app, which is in the works. “The iPad app is better than sex,” boasts Imbruce. Qwiki’s highly visual presentation of information lends itself to big, touch screens. He also wants to make it easy for developers to incorporate the Qwiki format into their apps.

Below is the Disrupt demo that convinced Saverin to invest:

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Qwiki, the visual search startup that won the top prize at TechCrunch Disrupt last September is in the middle of raising as much as $8 million in a series A financing. According to an SEC filing, it has already sold $5 million worth of the round. Both venture capital firms and individuals are investing. It appears that a large part of the round ($4 million so far) is being taken up by a pooled investment fund from Felix Venture Partners, at least according to this separate SEC filing. The company is still raising money to complete the round.

Qwiki has already raised $1.5 million in seed capital from angel investors including Keith Rabois (from PayPal, Slide, and now Sqaure), Shervin Pishevar (SGN), an Jawed Karim (the third YouTube founder), and Elad Gil (Google, now Twitter). The company was founded by Doug Imbruce and Louis Monier (who founded AltaVista).

The service is still technically in alpha, although it’s been opening up. It presents information in a highly visual way, assembling photos and spoken text from Wikipedia and other sources to create visual guides to millions of topics. Following its debut at Disrupt, the company fielded acquisition offers, but is now raising its series A to more fully develop the product. I still can’t wait for Qwiki to officially come to the iPad. Below is a video of Qwiki’s first demo at Disrupt.

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This is too funny not to post. The screen grab above comes from Qwiki, the visual search engine which came away with the top prize at our last TechCrunch Disrupt. Qwiki is still in private alpha , but it essentially assembles a visual narrative for millions of topics by pulling together images and text, which is read out loud by a friendly, female robo-voice.

When you search for “AOL” in Qwiki, it prominently features the slide above showing AOL’s precipitous decline in subscribers from 2001 to 2009. It is amazing how a picture can say it all, even if it is outdated. That slide pretty much sums up the perception of many people out there when you mention AOL. And algorithms too—Qwiki relies completely on its algorithms to select images.

Of course, AOL is trying to shake that past and move boldly into the future. Hell, it bought us, didn’t it? And, I must say, we are very happy with our new corporate overlords. In the past 30 days alone, referring traffic from AOL is up 7,948,666.67% (that is the actual number). May we have another?

Truth be told, the Qwiki entry on AOL could use some better images. Here is a better one to start with:

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The world is starting to get a first hand glimpse of TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki. And one of the things they’re noticing is this – Qwiki has no qwiki for Qwiki.

In other words, the site turns up no results for the query “qwiki,” and apparently a lot of first time users are using that as a test query. Just like lots of people type “google” into Google, or “wikipedia” into Wikipedia. And, yes, a surprising number of you also type “techcrunch” into our own search box.

Qwiki knows millions of things, the site says. It gathers data from resources like Wikipedia, Flickr and Yelp and then present that data in audio, video and image formats. Even obscure restaurants bring up cool results. It’s probably a good idea for them to add their own company into their database. Because people really want to see the Qwicki qwiki.

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