The news buzzing around the web this morning is that Twitter is planning to buy Summize, a website that utilizes the Twitter API to create a search engine for Twitter. Not only does Summize allow people to search through Twitter for keywords, it also provides its own API for other services. Popular Twitter apps like Twhirl, Quotably and Tweetburner use the Summize API.
The good part of this news is that Twitter will be able to integrate Summize into their service and use it as a revenue stream by monetizing the search engine. Twitter has been under a lot of pressure to figure out a way to turn the huge amount of traffic it generates into profit. Not only does Summize give Twitter a search engine, Om Malik is reporting on an app Summize has developed that can tell whether or not a topic is hot, cold, liked or disliked.
The bad part is that this is another service being added to the already-shaky Twitter service. Josh Chandler, who broke the story on Twitter buying Summize, believes Twitter should focus more on its site than acquisitions.
But if they don't find a way to turn a profit, the stability of their service becomes irrelevant. The trick is finding a way to turn a profit, streamline the underlying codebase, and upgrade their infrastructure before people start turning to rivals like Zannel.