Twitter Acquires Summify--Then Closes It

Twitter has purchased news aggregation startup Summify. The announcement, posted on the Summify blog, was bittersweet for Summify, since the acquisition also marks the closing of the popular service.

One user wrote the following in the comments section of Summify's blog post: "As someone who receives over a dozen such daily newsletter, Summify is by far the best. The acquire is great, congrats, but PLEASE don’t shutter the service!"

According to a post on the Summify site, the service will begin scaling back operations immediately and will stop completely in the near future. Since March, the Vancouver-based company has been sending users regular email summaries of the five most important news stories of the day based on which links were most popular on their social networks. In July, an iPhone app was released, which garnered 10,000 downloads in 14 days, according to the The Vancouver Sun.

According to All Things D, the major draw of Summify was the fact that it actually decreased the amount of news users saw per day.For people overloaded by content, this was a breath of fresh air. Reporter Liz Gannes noted, "At the end of each day’s list it said 'You’re done!'"

Summify was started by Mircea Pașoi and Cristian Strat, a team of two self-described "Romanian hackers and entrepreneurs." Both men, who are in their early 20s, turned down offers from Facebook and Google in order to move to Canada to start Summify, reported The Vancouver Sun in September.

Pasoi and Strat, along with three other members of the Summify team will be moving to California to join the Twitter Growth team in San Francisco.

According to Mashable, Twitter has not disclosed how the Summify acquisition would impact the microblogging site, although a representative from Twitter told Mashable that Summify "will help people connect and engage with relevant, timely news."

Comments

[cmacattack]

11:37 AM on 01/23/2012

As a consumer i HATE it when this happens. Google did the same thing with Simplify Media, it was an awesome service and then Google bought it and shuttered it immediately and then re-opened it a year later and called it google music. They added nothing new except cloud storage instead of using your own home computer as a cloud server. Other than that nothing new. Twitter will likely do the same thing here.

We have some of the most innovative start-ups in the world who just get swallowed up by a few big giants, Google, Apple, Microsoft etc as soon as it gets popular. And if they say no then the giants do everything to force it down. I was at CES a couple of weeks ago and the best products were small companies that also will get swallowed up. I'm getting sick of it. I understand it's capitalism at it's finest but i'm getting sick of it.

[Barbarian At The Gate]

02:56 PM on 01/21/2012

I wonder if the large multinationals actually get their tax holiday to bring offshore cash to the US if they actually would create jobs or if they would acquire smaller competitors and then close them down?

[jasonedward]

02:28 PM on 01/22/2012

History has shown that a tax holiday will not be used to create jobs. Rather, it's an incentive to offshore more and wait for another discounted repatriation of the profits.

[Josh Ledgard]

05:37 PM on 01/20/2012

Great for the founders. But what sucks about these "talent grabs" is that it leaves users hung out to dry.

We're working on a great alternative called SiftSocial that won't be shut down any time soon. Sign up for our beta today! http://www.siftsocial.com/?s=1SKC.

Our focus is to help you engage more efficiently in conversations and content online.

[French Toast]

08:04 AM on 01/20/2012

So basically everyone hire the Summify staff and create a service identical to Summify.

Sounds good to me.

[ideabloke]

10:48 AM on 01/24/2012

...and then re-sell it again, of course. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

[chiGrkBoy]

07:15 AM on 01/20/2012

This is part of why innovation dies in America, but I won't vilify Twitter in this. Summify took the money and sold out. The consumer loses by the shutdown, and I'm sure some Summify employees are now on indeed.com looking for a new job. The former owners are sitting pretty wondering if they can retire early.

There lies the problem. It's not just how big players can buy out or push out the smaller ones, but how many smaller players sell out rather than build an empire. Too many entrepreneurs get into a startup now simpkynlooking for a good IPO and/or to make enough noise so they can be bought out for millions. It's the mentality. I'm sure investment folk think this is fine, but I think this is why we have big box and franchises everywhere, and no o e seems ro want to build brick-and-mortar businesses that stand for 100 years.

[brentschmidt]

07:13 AM on 01/20/2012

Occupy Twitter. They by far are the biggest threat to the internet these days. Fuck all of the employees.

[proudloudlib]

10:45 AM on 01/23/2012

That is the first time I have seen the F-word get past the moderators. Someone napping this morning, HuffPo?

[lvogt]

12:10 AM on 01/20/2012

Capitalism can be a wonderful thing but this is an example of how a big player can simply eliminate the competition. It's why Mom & Pop stores that gave people a stake and a living have been replaced by low-wage chains. You can say it's good for the consumer but is the product better? Not usually. Is it better for society? No. Even if there are more jobs they don't pay enough for a family to live on. It's very sad.

[Flight]

10:34 PM on 01/19/2012

If I had the opportunity to sit down with either Dorsey or Z-berg and chat, I'd choose Dorsey. After reading about both and listening to other interviews as in above, Dorsey has done this and that before Twitter and find him to be more interesting.

[farleft1917]

07:52 PM on 01/19/2012

Pax iAmericana is all about limiting choice. And Twitter is meant to be the tool of revolutions but only for the Oligarchs right to bleed us dry and turn the world into one concrete and barbed wire gated community.

Remember when AOL fell apart when customers preferred the burgeoning freedom of the web? Now we have closed platforms like cancers coming in a killing creativity.

[Mikko Koskinen]

05:26 PM on 01/19/2012

Well, though very good, Summify isn't the only digest email. www.scoopinion.com serves stories people actually read: it learns one's preferences and measures how people engage with articles -> stories worth reading

[jwpilcher]

05:10 PM on 01/19/2012

The only way to stop online behemoths from doing this is if someone starts up a Summify clone asap. I'm all for that!

[GreaterPliny]

04:06 PM on 01/19/2012

Congratulations to Twitter for moving in the right direction!

Buying companies and then shutting them down 5 minutes later is the right way to grow commerce!

You get the Mitt Romney award of the month!.

[David]

04:01 PM on 01/19/2012

What happens to the rest of Summify's staff?

[GreaterPliny]

04:07 PM on 01/19/2012

Unemployment and then ?

[eye8urcake]

09:28 PM on 01/19/2012

And then the Republican presidential candidates blame those newly unemployed techies for everything that's wrong in the Western world.

[roydoe]

04:37 PM on 01/19/2012

*burp*