Twitter to Summize?; Say Goodbye To Summize’s Future Conversation Tracking Potential

So the hot story in the tech blogo’ this evening is that Twitter is acquiring Summize. First of all, who cares. ReadWriteWeb notes that either Jason Chandler or Jason Calacanis "broke" the news. My money is on Jason.

Mike Arrington says that Summize has raised $750k and Twitter over $20 million. He also says he deal "certainly makes sense". While it seems like it does on the surface, I am not sure I agree. It would absolutely be a quick fix for a search function and a replies tab on Twitter, sure. Past that, not so much. Do mainstream users really care about search on Twitter? The replies tab yes, that’s a critical Twitter element.

When Summize presented at the NY Tech meetup (video embedded below), they spoke about very large aspirations to track the real-time conversational Web, not just Twitter. If Twitter acquires the service, that goes bye-bye.

For example, is Summize built on the same platform and language as Twitter is? What would the integration time and cost look like? Would it be quicker to use the money to build their own already integrated into their codebase and to their specs? If they acquiring Summize for their technical talent, that’s a different story. Outside of that possibility, what would Twitter gain strategically?

I’d vote partnership as I did on an earlier post. A full Summize acquisition seems like it would be just to please the tech blogosphere and give Twitter a pinch of goodwill.