Twitter And Summize Sitting In A Tree. M-E-R-G-I-N-G
I can almost picture the scene - two young CEOs meet on a Spring day at New York's Shake Shack to talk about their planned nuptials. After they polish off their fries and the chocolate shake with one straw (I'm assuming), they head over for a stroll through Union Square to talk over the matrimonial details.
OK, maybe I've watched one too many chick flicks with the wife, but that's actually what I pictured when I read the blog entry about this marriage, er, merger between Twitter and Summize. (There was even an image of two love birds at the top of the entry, along with the words "Perfect Match" in the headline.)
Yes, the two startups do complement each other. People on Twitter are interested in more than just what's being said by the folks they're following. They want to know what people are saying about the topics that interest them. Summize powers Twitter with a search functionality that will give users a peek into what's being said about the iPhone or the Netflix-XBox360 deal or anything else out there. Twitter has long needed some sort of search functionality, so this is a step in the right direction. And it's true that more and more, news is being shared in the 140 characters or less that Twitter allows - which means that an add-on to filter those headlines is smart for growth.
Still, I have to wonder if Twitter should spend less time looking for complementary services and more time solving - not just momentarily addressing - the capacity issues that have kept people from accessing the site in recent weeks. In all fairness, Twitter says the problems are being addressed and that performance has improved considerably. But Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in his blog that "Overall service performance remains our first and foremost priority." Adding Summize's five engineers and moving them to San Francisco should help further this goal, he said. That implies that problems still exist.
I'll wait and see. But I have to admit that I - and probably many others like me - have spent days at a time away from Twitter because of the capacity problem. There's no way I'd let any of my other favorite Web services - Yahoo Mail, Google Reader, Facebook and so on - get away with such an error message.
Also See: Confirmed: Twitter Buys Summize Twitter Confirms Summize Acquisition Yes, Twitter Bought Summize