San Francisco's Twitter have announced that they have acquired the search company Summize. No valuation on the deal, but according to valley insiders the deal is worth $15 million+ in a stock-cash combo.
Five of the six Summize employees will join up with the Twitter team in San Francisco, while Summize founder and CEO Jay Verdy will move on to pastures new.
Twitter now has an opportunity to monetize it's popular micro-blogging and social networking service. Currently the service is free to registrants. The Summize model which provides access to contextual search, much in the same way that Google has made it's fortune with ads adjacent to key words, ie: locations, companies and data points commonly used in popular threads on the SMS and internet network.
Advertising revenue may also appear in more traditional banner models on the US website, as with the Japanese version of the company's site.
During in a conversation with TechCrunch at last weekends Foo Camp 2008 conference —a geeks gone-wild-in tents hacker festival held in Sebastapol—Mr Williams did not rule out the possibility of Twitter users receiving 'opt-in' ads on their messages.
Hopefully the Summize technology will also help with service outages and calm the Twitter fraternity when the network is jammed with 'Tweets' at the next big indoor Tech conference.