Twitter buys Summize, launches Twitter Search

As expected, Twitter has purchased Summize, a search engine designed for the micro-blogging service. The pairing seems pretty obvious. While Twitter may have started as a means of individual expression, the service has quickly grown into a repository of news and opinions.

Want to know what people think of the latest blockbuster movie? Just enter the title into Summize and you'll get a whole slew of results. Want to see what people are saying about a politician? Summize can help. The search engine can also help you find other Twitter users who share your interests, making it easy to expand your own social network.

Twitter has launched a new site that looks and works pretty much exactly like Summize, at search.twitter.com. The only difference is that the new site says Twitter and not Summize. If you visit Summize.com, you'll automatically be taken to the new site.

Terms of the deal have not been made public, but Silicon Alley Insider reports that Twitter paid $15 million for Summize. It might have made more sense for the company to develop its own search engine in-house. But since somebody's already done the work, and since Twitter is sitting on a pile of venture capital, an acquisition was probably the easiest way to go.

Tags: search, summize, tweet-this, twitter