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. 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 dont. And if youre 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 youve recently missed.
But Twitter isnt as worried about the Digerati as it is the social network laypersons those uninitiated in Twitters ranks. For the everyman, attacking Twitter for the first time is no easy feat. Its a confusing amalgam of symbols and verbs, a vernacular all of its own that isnt 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.