(http://i39.tinypic.com/2ii7uog.jpg)
Summify surfaces the most relevant data amid your aggregate social streams.
Continuing strong on its recent acquisition spree, Twitter announced on Thursday the acquisition of Summify, a social news aggregation start-up based in Vancouver.
As the Summify team transitions to its new Twitter digs in San Francisco, the Summify products will slowly be shuttered and streamlined, according to a company blog post (http://blog.summify.com/2012/01/19/summify-joins-the-flock-at-twitter/). Summify states its core aggregation product , summarizes the disparate flows of information that flood in from your Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader streams (among others) — will shut down in a few weeks.
Considering the torrent of information Twitter delivers on a real-time basis — to say nothing of all the other social networks where we work and play — the possibility of integrating a product like Summify makes a great deal of sense. The product is essentially a daily bulletin of pertinent information, using algorithms to separate the ‘wheat’ it thinks you want to read from the ‘chaff’ you don’t. And if you’re a voracious news and social information consumer like the average Silicon Valley techie, Summify functioned as a great way to get your fix of what you’ve recently missed.
But Twitter isn’t as worried about the Digerati as it is the social network laypersons — those uninitiated in Twitter’s ranks. For the everyman, attacking Twitter for the first time is no easy feat. It’s a confusing amalgam of symbols and verbs, a vernacular all of its own that isn’t immediately accesible. To combat this (in part, at least), Twitter launched a complete site-wide redesign in December, aiming to broaden its user base.
“Cristian Strat and Mircea Pasoi have created a product that curates the best and most important stories in your Twitter timeline and Facebook newsfeed,” Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner told Wired in an e-mail. “Cristian, Mircea and their team of three engineers will join our Growth team and explore ways to help people connect and engage with relevant, timely news.”
So integrating Summify seems a probable next step. Facebook and Google+ rely on their own algorithms to deliver relevant news to users’ streams — it makes sense that Twitter would aim for something similar.