Twitter Acquires News Service ‘Summify’

2012 is likely to be a huge year for Twitter. Having had a complete design overhaul at the end of last year, arguably only now is the social networking site beginning to truly find its feet as a more interactive, ‘stickier’ (referring to the time users stay on the site) and more enticing alternative to Facebook, Google+ and the like. 

The acquisition of news aggregator service Summify represents the next big step for the site in better connecting with its audience, rather than being a mere conduit between 140-character posts and the rest of the world. Summify, for those who haven’t yet heard of it, ‘crawls’ individuals’ social media accounts – whether Twitter, Facebook, Google+ - looking to find the most popular and top shared news stories between their friends. The service would then produce a report of the most relevant news articles and send a daily update through email or mobile App. In Twitter’s case, the notable stories picked up by Summify will likely be integrated into users’ ‘Discover’ page. 

Having been bought for an undisclosed sum, Summify will now begin to phase out operations of its current service, with the Vancouver-based company stating on its blog that it has now halted all account registrations and started removing features for its move to Twitter HQ in San Francisco.