Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Twitter has acquired Summize for approximately 15 million dollars along with some Twitter stock. Summize makes for an awesome complimentary service to Twitter in that they provide search functionality that far surpasses their own. What’s been nice about Summize is that, you can use it to track conversations when the Twitter replies tab is disabled. This happened recently and Summize made for a nice replacement until the feature was re-enabled. It’s interesting to note that there were only five people involved with the company.
I found this quote from the Silicon Alley story to be quite thought provoking:
“Think of that development as a Rorschach test for your take on Web 2.0 in general: Either this thing is going to implode very soon, or people who get hung up on startup valuations are short-sighted bores who don’t get the possibilities of technology.”
It’s gotta be one or the other right?
What I’ve noticed though is that there are not as many web 2.0 startups springing up like wild flowers across the web as there were in 2006-2007. So perhaps we are on the other side of the bell curve. If not, this Summize deal confirms that there are still opportunities to be made with room to cash out.
If you are not sure how Summize works, be sure to check out this review I wrote on Performancing a few weeks ago