Summify Joins The Flock At Twitter!

by summify on January 19, 2012

You’ve probably noticed we’ve been quiet lately. Well, we’re extremely excited to announce that Summify has been acquired by Twitter! I know, right? We can hardly believe it ourselves!

Roughly 2 years ago, we moved from Romania to Vancouver after being accepted into Bootup Labs, an awesome startup incubator. It has been an incredible journey, with lots of highs, a few lows, and many product iterations. In March 2011 we launched our email summary product and we’ve been blown away by the response ever since. Many of our users tell us we found a magical solution to a truly unsolved problem.

Our long-term vision at Summify has always been to connect people with the most relevant news for them, in the most time efficient manner. As hundreds of millions of people worldwide are signing up and consuming Twitter, we realized it’s the best platform to execute our vision at a truly global scale. Since Twitter shared this vision with us, joining the company made perfect sense.

We’d like to give a big thanks to all of our investors and advisors, especially Bootup Labs, Boris Wertz, Rob Glaser, Andrew Braccia, Stewart Butterfield, Steve Olechowski, our users, our team and, of course, the city of Vancouver. Thank you for your support and your faith in us, we couldn’t have made it so far without you!

And, a huge thanks to @robncampbell for all his work with us over the last 7 months.

Best,
The Summify Team

FAQ

What happens to Summify?

We will be disabling new account registrations immediately and we will also be removing some features. We will keep the email summaries for a few more weeks, but at some point we will shut down the current Summify product. In the meantime, if you’re a user of Summify you’ll still receive your summaries, just like before.

What features are you removing?

Starting today, the following changes will take effect:
We’re removing the ability to make your summaries public (i.e. all summaries will be private)
We’re removing profile pages and influence pages
We’re removing the auto-publish feature
We’re disabling user registration from the website, iPhone and Hootsuite apps

Why are you removing these features?

We are offering a more streamlined service as we transition our efforts to working at Twitter.

Will you still be in Vancouver?

We will be moving down to San Francisco and will work out of the Twitter office.

What will you be doing at Twitter?

We are joining Twitter’s Growth team and will continue to explore ways to help people connect and engage with relevant, timely news.

UPDATE

Thanks for your notes of congratulations. We’re thrilled to be joining Twitter. Some of you have expressed concerns about the product being shut down. We appreciate your support and enthusiasm. At Twitter, we are going to focus our efforts on making Twitter even more engaging and useful for you. While we can’t get into details on what’s to come, we can say that we’re excited and we think you will be too.

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340 Comments Post a comment

Brad Brooks (@ninthart) #

While I’m really happy for you guys, I’m really upset that you seem to be shutting down the whole Summify experience. I’ve come to depend on the iPhone app, and I’m in shock that it’s going away. Is there no way that Twitter will allow you to keep the app going?

January 19, 2012

Reply
- Pablo Esteves (@pabesteves) #
  
  Check out Percolate. I use it and I love it.
  
  January 23, 2012
  
  Reply
- Ronan Amicel (@amicel) #
  
  Congrats for the acquisition, and sorry to see a good product go…
  
  For those now looking for an alternative, you might want to check out focus.io. It’s a simple service that gives you a daily summary of the most popular articles in your Twitter timeline: we’d love your feedback if you give it a try!
  
  http://focus.io/
  
  January 24, 2012
  
  Reply
- Phil Gillman (@philmang) #
  
  I second the percolate suggestion.
  
  February 8, 2012
  
  Reply
Jim Gaynor (@jimgaynor) #

Congratulations – it’s definitely a step up for the team and a chance to work on a bigger stage.

However, I’m sad to hear about the “streamlining” and pending shutdown of Summify. It was a service that lived up to its own press, and was genuinely useful – you were one of the few notification services I invited into my Inbox, and I can think of many interesting and relevant stories I would have missed in the noise if they hadn’t popped up in my Summify.

So yes, a large part of me would have liked to see you build Summify into a profitable service standing on its own. But I well understand the realities – especially when you attract the attention of a Twitter or Facebook.

Good luck with your future efforts!

January 19, 2012

Reply
Andy #

It’s impossible to trust apps like this. I’ve been through the experience before, here today and gone tomorrow. They think nothing of pulling the rug out from underneath you. Like I said, there’s no incentive to start using any of these apps anymore.

January 19, 2012

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David Teicher (@Aerocles) #

Agreed with most of the other commenters. As someone who receives over a dozen such daily newsletter, Summify is by far the best. The aquhire is great, congrats, but PLEASE don’t shutter the service!

January 19, 2012

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Kevin Skobac (@kskobac) #

I echo other people’s sentiments! I’m happy for you guys, because you built an awesome product, but I’m bummed to hear that you’ll be shutting down some of your best features. The HootSuite integration was brilliant; I was looking forward to using a combination of Summify and HootSuite to power content generation for several upcoming projects! Hopefully this doesn’t result in an only slightly better Twitter at the cost of a really cool product.

January 19, 2012

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Matt #

Wish I could be happy for you, but the shuttering of the service is disturbing. Echo everything everyone’s said.

January 19, 2012

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Hakan Tee (@hakantee) #

while i’m really happy to hear such great news, i’m equally a little bit upset that everything about summify seems to vanish.

January 19, 2012

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Aaron Cruikshank #

Congrats guys! I remember talking about the whole thing with you guys when you were brand spanking new!

January 19, 2012

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Max #

There’s got to be a way to keep the service up and running. This is so disappointing and is a real ugly move for your users who rely on Summify and would have come along as you grew and monetized it. So disappointing.

January 19, 2012

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Mario #

Congratz! Awesome job!

January 19, 2012

Reply
- Tammy #
  
  Congrats guys, Just covered you on wearesocialpeople.com. Can’t wait to see what you do at Twitter!
  
  ~Tammy
  
  January 20, 2012
  
  Reply
Cristian Pascu #

Well done guys! This is awesome news. :)

January 19, 2012

Reply
Ville Sundberg #

Congrats to the team for being acquired!

Soon-to-be-former Summify users should check out our alternative: a newsletter based on reader engagement, not clicks. http://www.scoopinion.com

January 19, 2012

Reply
Anunturi #

Well, every good thing must come to an end. This time though there’s hope that the intelligence behind this project will actually focus on something even grater than this. I’m happy for you. Keep up the good work and keep us posted with your progress in the big world.

January 19, 2012

Reply
Peter #

Kind of hypocrite of you guys. To quote your own words:

“The important part was when we decided to not accept offers, full time offers from Facebook and Google and not go and become engineers and actually take the path and become entrepreneurs.”

Not that I’m against this choice, it’s your company, you know best, just that it’s against your “said” principles.

January 19, 2012

Reply
- Kent #
  
  So “Peter,” people have no right to change their minds in the future? You are a tool. Whining like a baby because you aren’t getting FREE milk forever. Shame on you.
  
  What a load of self-entitlement I’m reading here.
  
  Congratulations to these guys, and much luck to them!
  
  January 19, 2012
  
  Reply
  - Peter #
    
    Actually, I’ve never used summify, so sorry, I don’t see the self entitlement you’re talking about. My argument was only about principles.
    
    January 20, 2012
  - x w #
    
    Lol, Kent got owned!
    
    January 20, 2012
  - TrollSpotlight #
    
    Wow, missing the point entirely. Hello Kent, you are a whiny troll of annoying and wrong.
    
    January 20, 2012
Tudor #

You sold out, dudes :(

I hope at least you made a good deal.

January 19, 2012

Reply
Philip Ryan Johnson #

Wow. One could only wish us all to be so happy, but it is clear Summify’s announcement does little more than throw its committed users under the bus.

What a shame to have grown such an engaging, dedicated, and trusting community of users—a daunting ordeal envied by all startups—only to backhand everyone in the process.

And unfortunately, the growing disappointment and anger easily rubs off onto Twitter for being viewed as the key player initiating the acquisition. Sad.

January 19, 2012

Reply
alin #

congrats !

January 19, 2012

Reply
andrew #

take the money and run boys. no shame in feeding yourself and your own.

January 19, 2012

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Rohan Jayasekera #

Congrats to you all personally for a successful exit.

But as someone who currently benefits greatly from using Summify, which as far as I can tell is better than all its competitors, I’m sad to hear that Summify will disappear. After TweetDeck was bought by Twitter, support for LinkedIn and other services was dropped, and I suppose Facebook support will go away too. (So I’m continuing to use my old version of TweetDeck instead of the new one, and when I can’t do that any more for any reason I will switch to a third-party competitor who has no qualms about integrating the multiple sources that are all relevant to me.) Similarly, I expect whatever you build in future to be about tweets and nothing else. Which means that in future other people will build equivalents of Summify (despite all the difficulties that Twitter will attempt to put in their way), and that’s what I’ll be using, not whatever you guys build.

But again, Summify is your accomplishment, nobody else’s, and I’m happy that you have been rewarded for it.

January 19, 2012

Reply
Mich Sineath (@michsineath) #

I agree with the majority of the commenters here. It sucks that you’re shutting down the service; in fact, today, I was just bragging at the office about how great of a tool — specifically your email summaries — were for me. What a bummer.

January 19, 2012

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Nicholas Montgomery (@NichM) #

LOVE Summify! Congrats on the acquisition. Please keep improving the product and don’t just join the team though.

January 19, 2012

Reply
ramon parra #

me parece extraordinario, muchas gracias

January 19, 2012

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Kent #

Unbelievable! Some of you self-absorbed commenters act like Summify is your property. They are all real people, they have to eat, they have a right to improve their futures, and things change. You weren’t paying a cent, and you demand they continue the free lunch.

As far as I’m concerned, you were given a free gift, and yet you are complaining that you aren’t receiving more gifts indefinitely. What ungrateful, self-entitled sloths.

I congratulate these guys for hanging in there and toughing it out. Good luck!

January 19, 2012

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Alexandru Stanciu (@ducu) #

Congrats guys!! That’s a great thing on your resumes ;)

January 20, 2012

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Ted #

Seems shortsighted for Twitter to shut y’all down while you do the next thing. Instead of having a committed community (the vast majority of whom are very active on Twitter, I’m sure) that could be a reliable and useful beta group, they have created a disappointed and in many cases outraged group that will be actively seeking and evangelizing for some other product.

And all their tweets and posts will begin, “After Twitter shut down Summify, one of my favorite…”

January 20, 2012

Reply
- Phillip Hershkowitz #
  
  Twitter reputation management:
  
  Keep summify going = happy, vocal customers.
  Shut summify down = noisy, angry EX-users.
  
  January 20, 2012
  
  Reply
danbonert #

congrats, but what could have you been without selling out? Makes you wonder

January 20, 2012

Reply
Jared Parmenter (@jared_parmenter) #

Like others have said, congrats on being snapped up – hope you’re making a nice profit.

Like others, I reiterate disappointment that a deal couldn’t have been struck to allow your current users to still get your awesome email product. If there’s something in the works at Twitter to do the same kind of deal, I’d love it if you would hint at that to appease us a little bit! (I also hope – believe? – you wouldn’t just sell the heart of the company without making some kind of deal to keep the service alive, or reborn, in the future.)

The main problem is, and the thing I love about Summify was, the cross-platformness of the news summaries. I can’t imagine any scenario where Twitter will allow you to keep tapping into other networks, which is a huge shame.

Siloing of networks and products just hurt users.

Anyways, it’s too bad I’ve never thought to post about how much I love the service, until now that I realize it’s getting pulled. My bad. Maybe if I, and some of the other commenters, had committed more to helping spread the word, you might not have felt it necessary to untie the knots of relationship you’ve spent so long building.

Just to be clear, I LOVED your (now) ‘old’ service, used it every day, turned off all my branded email newsletters like Mashable and HuffPost and LifeHacker, because I knew the best stories would bubble up into my Summify. Congrats on creating a service people used religiously, and loved doing it!

January 20, 2012

Reply
- Jared Parmenter (@jared_parmenter) #
  
  Wow, I was wrong – I always thought some of those links came from non-Twitter sources. I guess I just have a lot of overlap of Facebook and Twitter accounts. Scrap that part of my comment ;-)
  
  January 20, 2012
  
  Reply
Jared Parmenter (@jared_parmenter) #

“News.Me Swoops In To Save Summify Users.” Go, free market, go!

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/newsme_swoops_in_to_save_save_summify_users.php

January 20, 2012

Reply
ebuygate #

What a shame to have grown such an engaging, dedicated, and trusting community of users—a daunting ordeal envied by all startups—only to backhand everyone in the process.

January 20, 2012

Reply
ebuygate #

Nice Work I am Searching For That http://www.ebuysilver.com Thank you.

January 20, 2012

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Nanok Bie #

No no no. Why shut down this great service? Curating streams from multiple sources, like you do with Twitter, RSS and Facebook is just (insanely) great. It won’t be as good if you only curate within Twitter. I’m sad to hear that you sold out. Gonna have to check out News.me – good news for them this buy-out.

January 21, 2012

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@_SENF_ #

Alternative: http://beta.strawberryj.am/

January 21, 2012

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Piet #

Yeah I enjoyed a free service for a couple of months, but does that mean that I have to be happy that you got acquired by Twitter?

From a business perspective you guys have done a great job, but from my personal perspective I am going to lose a great service I have started to love and look forward to receive every day!

So I’m sorry, but I am not happy at all.

I cancelled Twitter some time ago and have no intention going back, after all I have Google+ that is keeping me busy in the online social media circles.

Heck, I don’t even see a relationship between Summify and Twitter!

Ah well, I am happy that there still is RSS and there is no way that RSS sells out on anyone or throws people under the bus…

January 21, 2012

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paul goss #

like most of these “acquisitions” we’ll see how the product evolves.. if Tweetdeck is any indication of what will happen, oh wait.. just got this email:

“Starting today, the following chances will take effect:
We’re removing the ability to make your summaries public (i.e. all summaries will be private)
We’re removing profile pages and influence pages
We’re removing the auto-publish feature
We’re disabling user registration from the website, iPhone and Hootsuite apps”

users were polled I guess and this is what “they” wanted? I’ve thought for a longtime that these are money grabs.. I ran M&A for a billion $ public company and the “deals” were enough to make me stop doing them..

January 21, 2012

Reply
blessing41 #

Please discontinue my subscription “Completely”.

January 21, 2012

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Craig Booker #

While I am happy to hear of your personal success, I can’t help but share in the disappointment. I don’t know all the details, but it really looks like a talent acquisition and not the product. Sounds like it is time for an open source version of Summify.
Twitter is eating up the companies that are creating value based on the Twitter network. It makes me wonder if they are going to limit the API significantly in the future or just continue to gobble up startups that do something truly amazing with it.

January 21, 2012

Reply
Dominic #

Sad to see Twitter closing this service. Summify saved me hours of not having to go through my Twitter feeds and I can see how it makes sense for Twitter to shut it down. It will be interesting to see if news.me will become what Summify was. Congratulations to you guys! All the best for the future!

January 21, 2012

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John Palmer (@mistere7777) #

Happy for you! What disappoints me might be that you seem to be disabling the very things that set it apart and make it special! I hope my fears are unfounded and hope the experience will be improved for all.

January 21, 2012

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Richard Kirov (@KiTTGT) #

I wonder how much was that “undisclosed sum” paid from twitter?… My guess is ~couple of million, probably up to 10. Congratulations to you! You were very dedicated to this project and obviously you knew what you were doing.
With that said, it was fun while it lasted ! *moves to Zite*

January 22, 2012

Reply
Mechtild Macdonald #

No comment yet

January 22, 2012

Reply
Elia Méndez #

Dear Summify team, first of all congratulations, but I expect to see you by twitter. I’m attached to your news and I don’t want to miss you.

I’ll follow you all guys!!! Kind regards from @galath1 from Spain

January 22, 2012

Reply
Federico #

Congratulation!
But please, take this awesome service up!

January 22, 2012

Reply
fabriziofaraco #

Reblogged this on fabriziofaraco and commented:
Smart move by Twitter

January 26, 2012

Reply
yup #

I am from Romania and I am proud of you guys. Keep up the good work.

January 30, 2012

Reply
40plusdating #

Great posts here, great information, it was like you was reading my mind.

January 31, 2012

Reply
flinton #

Surprisingly! It is like you some how was reading my mind everthing i wanted to say was said and everythign i was thinking was written.

January 31, 2012

Reply
pat #

Being a woman, i am more sentitive towards feelings and emotions; I feel a connection here; like I have found my place. thanks.

January 31, 2012

Reply
ali #

i really want to earn money from my twitter account is their any gud way to do this

February 8, 2012

Reply
- Tammy #
  
  You really need to use Twitter to facilitate and action, and that action can help make you money, if it’s driving traffic to your business, searching for viable leads… you can do these things.
  
  Give MarketMeSuite a try
  
  February 8, 2012
  
  Reply
pat #

Great post, great information! Just had to let you know. Keep it coming for all of us. Thanks.

February 9, 2012

Reply
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February 23, 2012

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February 24, 2012

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Hi,

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March 9, 2012

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i really want to earn money from my twitter account is their any gud way to do this

March 12, 2012

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March 19, 2012

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March 21, 2012

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March 27, 2012

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I really want to earn money from my twitter account. But Something you can learn from.

April 4, 2012

Reply
Simon #

Just heard on the radio that this was the new product to watch. I’m late to the party and now I have to manage my news…dammit. This just in, all excellent startups threatening Twitbook have been bought by Faceter. Guess, I’ll just have to find something else on the Bingle…

April 16, 2012

Reply
erniecordell #

Reblogged this on Ernest Phillip Henry Clay Yates Kehoe Head Cordell and commented:
Why are my email links disabled? Not even my unsubscribe will work: Is this something Google is doing?

June 27, 2012

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hey what happened since then?

July 22, 2012

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it is so sad to see you go.. :((

July 22, 2012

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July 30, 2012

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September 3, 2012

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November 22, 2012

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Summify Joins The Flock At Twitter!

FAQ

What happens to Summify?

What features are you removing?

Why are you removing these features?

Will you still be in Vancouver?

What will you be doing at Twitter?

UPDATE

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Summify Joins The Flock At Twitter!

FAQ

What happens to Summify?

What features are you removing?

Why are you removing these features?

Will you still be in Vancouver?

What will you be doing at Twitter?

UPDATE

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