Summify was a social news aggregator founded by Mircea Paşoi and Cristian Strat, two former Google and Microsoft interns from Romania.[1][2] The service emailed its users a periodic summary of news articles shared from their social networks based on their relevance and importance.[3] The platform supported Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader accounts.[4]

Summify
HeadquartersVancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Area servedWorldwide
Founder(s)
  • Mircea Paşoi
  • Cristian Strat
Industry
URLsummify.com
Current statusDiscontinued

History

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In 2009, Paşoi and Strat created ReadFu, a plugin that provided a contextual summary and statistics of the target page of a hyperlink.[5] In January 2010, ReadFu was accepted into the Vancouver-based start-up incubator Bootup Labs.[6] On March 20, 2010 the service was renamed to Summify and a private beta began.[7][8][9]

On August 11, 2010 Paşoi and Strat announced a new direction for the service. It would become a real-time social news reader that aggregates incoming news from social networks and displays articles by importance using social reactions.[10][11][12][13] After some feedback that the users preferred article digests by email more than the real-time news reader version, Summify discontinued the news reader version.[citation needed]

In March 2011, Summify completed a Seed round, with investors including Rob Glaser, Accel Partners, and Stewart Butterfield.[1][2][14][15][16]

Summify received coverage from various news and media outlets such as TechCrunch. It was also featured in various news platforms, such as Time, The Globe and Mail, Mashable, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and The Next Web.[12][17][18][19][20][21][22]

Summify released a free app on the Apple App Store on July 8, 2011.[23][24] The app allowed users to read their web summaries from iOS mobile devices.

Summify was acquired by Twitter on January 19, 2012. The service shut down soon after, on June 22, 2012.[25]

References

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  1. ^ a b Lewis, Rob (March 30, 2011). "Vancouver's Summify filters the social web and raises a seed round". TechVibes. Archived from the original on April 1, 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Summify Team". Summify. Archived from the original on January 8, 2018.
  3. ^ Brillson, Leila. Summify Distills Your News Into Five Bites of Personalized ‘Net Goodness Switched. March 31, 2011.
  4. ^ Gastall, Tom (April 4, 2011). "Summify launches, receives first round of Funding". StartupGazette. Archived from the original on April 8, 2011. Retrieved July 4, 2011.
  5. ^ "Hello World!". Summify. December 15, 2009.[dead link]
  6. ^ Mann, Boris (December 18, 2009). "New Companies for Jan 2010". Bootup Labs. Archived from the original on December 19, 2009. Retrieved July 4, 2011.
  7. ^ Lewis, Rob (2021-11-29). "Bootup's Summify renames and launches beta - 25 invites available". TechVibes. Archived from the original on April 2, 2016.
  8. ^ "ReadFu becomes Summify". Summify. Archived from the original on April 1, 2010.
  9. ^ "Summify in Private Beta". Summify. Archived from the original on April 3, 2010.
  10. ^ Lewis, Rob. Summify pivots into Social News Reader TechVibes. August 25, 2010.
  11. ^ "Hold on, Summify is back!". Summify. Archived from the original on August 15, 2010.
  12. ^ a b Cosinschi, Eugenia. Social news-reader Summify raises funds to solve information overload VentureBeat. August 24, 2010.
  13. ^ "Sprouter Weekly". Sprouter. October 27, 2010. Archived from the original on 2011-08-11. Retrieved 2011-07-04.
  14. ^ "Less Stories, More Funding!". Summify. Archived from the original on April 2, 2011.
  15. ^ Lewsi, Rob (August 24, 2010). "Vancouver's Summify lands seed round from W Media Ventures". TechVibes. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016.
  16. ^ Cook, John. Ex-Microsoft and Google interns launch Summify, with cash from Rob Glaser and others GeekWire. March 30, 2011.
  17. ^ McMillan, Graeme.Exhausted by Social Media? Let Summify Read the Internet for YouTime Techland. March 31, 2011.
  18. ^ Friesen, Joe (July 7, 2011). "Immigrant tech stars face hurdles in quest to start business in Canada". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on July 11, 2011.
  19. ^ Kessler, Sarah (March 30, 2011). "Overwhelmed By News? Summify Picks The Top 5 Articles You Should Read". Mashable. Archived from the original on April 23, 2011.
  20. ^ Chan, Casey. Summify Gives You 5 Articles to Read a Day Based on Your Internet Reading Habits Gizmodo. March 30, 2011.
  21. ^ Gordon, Whitson. Summify Sends You the Day’s 5 Most Important Stories, Based on Your Reading Habits Lifehacker. April 1, 2011.
  22. ^ Hussey, Tris. Catch Up On the News With Summify. We Have Invite Codes! The Next Web. October 24, 2010.
  23. ^ "Summify Launches iPhone App". Summify. Archived from the original on July 11, 2011.
  24. ^ Lewis, Rob (July 8, 2011). "Summify launches iPhone App but will its founders stay in Canada?". TechVibes. Archived from the original on 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2011-07-09.
  25. ^ Bishop, Bryan (24 May 2012). "Summify going offline June 22nd; accounts tied to Twitter will receive daily summary emails". The Verge. Retrieved 17 July 2012.
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