Twitter Snatches Up Summize. Meanwhile, Servers Crash

Twitter. I love Twitter. A lot. It's a fun service that provides a perfect medium for short updates about what's going on in my world, and with a great, open API, integrates well into many of my other services. It's had it's fair share of problems though, not the least of which being server stability issues. I've honestly thought they've been doing much better, if this past weekend and this week are any indication, as I did not see the servers crash during the iPhone launch and have not seen them crash during this weeks E3 conference.

One of the best uses of the Twitter API has been another service called Summize (the service has already been changed from Summize.com to search.Twitter.com), which is essentially a search engine for Twitter. Want to see what people are saying about the crazy-ass, newly Lesbianized Lindsay Lohan? Just pop in her name into the search engine and out pops comments about her from all over Twitter, in order. The page also updates with new Tweets as they come. Not sure whether you should see Hancock? Check to see what the general attitude is on Twitter to be on the safe side.

But possibly the best use of the service is the customized RSS feeds you can create from your searches. If you're in marketing or PR, you might want to stay on top of what people are saying about your company, and what better way than a real-time RSS feed of Tweets? Ok, so it shouldn't be your only tool, but it could be an excellent tool. What about your website or blog? Are people talking about it, and what are they saying? Good questions, and you get great answers with Summize.

This move has been predicted for some time, but it's official today. This could also be one of the foreseen ways to "monetize" Twitter. Like I said, keeping your finger on the public pulse is mission critical to Marketing and PR teams, and I can think of quite a few that might be willing to pay for that kind of on-demand knowledge. We'll see what's to come soon, but this seems like an extremely smart move to me.

Finding A Perfect Match [Twitter Blog]