Qwiki chosen as top disruptive company at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco

Qwiki has won the TechCrunch Disrupt award as the company with the most disruptive game-changing strategy at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco today.

Co-founder Doug Imbruce, who demonstrated Qwiki on-stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco this week, compared the site to what you see in science fiction movies like Wall-E, where users ask a computer a question and then receive an answer with relevant images and narration. Qwiki users type in a search term, and Qwiki pulls information and media from the Web and narrates the answer in a computerized voice while displaying related media.

Qwiki will receive a $50,000 grand prize from TechCrunch, as well as the “disrupt cup” from previous winner Soluto, which produces software that monitors computers to track ways to improve performance. Soluto picked up the award at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in New York earlier this year.

Badgeville, which aims to bring the badge concept popularized by Foursquare to any online publisher, was voted the most popular company by the audience, clinching the people’s choice award. Badgeville is basically Foursquare for websites, aligned with publisher objectives. It’s on track to make $1 million this year.