Summize may be Acquired by Twitter

Posted by Vaibhav

July 8, 2008

Micro-blogging and social networking service Twitter may acquire Virginia-based Summize, which is a Twitter search engine. A source close to Twitter revealed that the two firms have been in discussions over the last couple of weeks regarding a merger, but denied to comment on the terms and whether there was any occurrence of an actual sale.

As far as Twitter is concerned, this deal indeed makes sense. Unlike its archrival Friendfeed, Twitter lacks a search feature even today. Moreover, in the recent past, Twitter has heavily rested on Summize to help lessen load on the Twitter API. Also, Summize is one of, or the only Twitter partner that enjoys access to their XMPP stream.

In fact, recently, Summize employees have also been spotted at Twitter HP, although this may be due to the close working relationship of the two companies.

It has been learnt that Summize has raised only $750,000 in an angel round of financing, while Twitter has raised above $20 million, which is tremendously more than Summize.

However, Summize is well known for offering most interesting services over the Web. It began as an academic research project by Dr. Abdur Chowdhury of the Illinois Institute of Technology, and today has it’s headquarter in Virginia. Summize describes itself as a tool used for conversion search, which is certainly a well deserved tagline.

The translation tool offered by the service utilizes Google Language tools for translating non-English messages by Twitter into English with just a single click of the mouse. Further, with access to the Twitter XMPP API, it is able to provide on-screen notification of any fresh search results as and when they become accessible. Hence, it can be said that the Summize search API is a very essential Twitter search tool for all the third party clients and services of Twitter.

Coming back to the acquisition, it will be interesting to watch as the story unfolds and whether the speculation turns futile or correct.

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