The micro-blogging pioneer, Twitter has confirmed that it has bought the search engine Summize. The deal makes a lot of sense since Summize was built to search Twitter in the first place, and Twitter has been looking for a competent search engine to deal with its overwhelming amounts of data. Five of the six Summize engineers will relocate to Twitter HQ in San Francisco.
Twitter already allowed you to search by basic information such as a username or location, but Summize allowed for people to search by keywords. With Summize's search engine as an integrated part of Twitter you can use Summize's more detailed Twitter search without ever leaving Twitter. Twitter addicts, your addiction has just been fed.
The financial compensation has not been revealed to the public, but estimates range from $8 million to $30 million and according to TechCrunch the transaction was "mostly stock".
Living in a Twitter Bubble
I don't mean to be a naysayer, but this company looks like a bubble waiting to burst. Other corporations have had this problem before--lots of hype but no earnings of any kind-- Microsoft's famous investment in Facebook comes to mind; however the Microsoft/Facebook deal had some actual cash behind it and FB does have some earnings potential already.
Twitter, on the other hand, currently has no monetization on its site and it is plagued with downtime and service slowdowns because of its popularity. People love the site, and that's great news, but how this is going to pay off in the long run for the company? Others have asked this question before, and while some suggest there are solutions such as working with cell phone makers to integrate Twitter or selling the company to a mobile carrier, I just don't see it. Twitter, like many other tech companies, is focused on its own development and not the cold hard facts of the business world.
Summize may have sold its rights to Twitter, but that stock it is sitting on may end up being a 90s flashback if the company doesn't start earning some cash.
(PC World contributor Scott Nichols helped with this post.)
