Qwiki isn't about panning around images and playing back TTS. I know that wasn't what the developer was thinking, but I find people making this mistake a lot. Thinking of Facebook as a basic CRUD app you could put together, etc.
Tesla motors is a technology startup: they're doing something that nobody has done before with technology. Putting something like that in the same categorization as Facebook is an insult to the engineering challenges Tesla faced from day one.
Note: Of course Facebook now has a lot of technology, because they're scaling a website to be used by the entire world, but I'm talking about early-stage startups.
What we need is a better word for startups on Techcrunch. "CRUD app + Graphics" or "local social 2.0 buzzword-compliant little companies"
While I think they are great (and I use and recommend their product) I don't see Wufoo as a "tech" company. They're like Zappos -- a Customer Service company that happens to be run from a website. That isn't a 'tech' company. It's just a company. Having a Building/shopfront and selling shoes doesn't make you a "real estate" company.
Tech Startups are startups taht actually have a technology to sell or a massive technological innovation. Companies like Isilon (had a $2.25B exit last year), or Google or Netscape or PrimeSense.
What problem is it really solving? Could you ever imagine yourself paying for Qwiki?
The problem: People generally prefer not to read. Yet, people are curious creatures. If they could quench their curiosity without having to read, they will.
In Mac OS I have keymapped Option-S assigned to the built-in text-to-speech on the fly, so anytime there's text on any page that I want read back to me I can quickly do so with a keystroke.
You know what? I never use it. I generally prefer to read.