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 relevance and importance.[3] The platform supported Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader accounts.[4] Advisors to Summify include Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite and Ethan Anderson, CEO of Redbeacon.[2]
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 as 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.
Summify released a free app on the AppleApp Store on July 8, 2011.[14][15] The app allows users to consume their web summaries from iOS mobile devices.
Summify was acquired by Twitter on January 19, 2012. The service shut down on June 22, 2012.[16]
Investorsedit
In March 2011, Summify completed a seed round of funding from the following investors:[1][2][17][18][19]
^Summify Launches iPhone App Summify. July 8, 2011.
^Lewis, Rob. Summify launches iPhone App but will its founders stay in Canada? TechVibes. July 8, 2011.
^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.
^Less Stories, More Funding! Summify. March 30, 2011.
^Lewis, Rob. Vancouver’s Summify lands seed round from W Media Ventures TechVibes. August 24, 2010.
^Cook, John. Ex-Microsoft and Google interns launch Summify, with cash from Rob Glaser and others GeekWire. March 30, 2011.
^McMillan, Graeme.Exhausted by Social Media? Let Summify Read the Internet for YouTime Techland. March 31, 2011.
^Friesen, Joe. Immigrant tech stars face hurdles in quest to start business in Canada The Globe and Mail. July 7, 2011.
^Kessler, Sarah. Overwhelmed By News? Summify Picks The Top 5 Articles You Should Read “Mashable”. March 30, 2011.
^Chan, Casey. Summify Gives You 5 Articles to Read a Day Based on Your Internet Reading Habits Gizmodo. March 30, 2011.
^Gordon, Whitson. Summify Sends You the Day’s 5 Most Important Stories, Based on Your Reading Habits Lifehacker. April 1, 2011.
^Hussey, Tris. Catch Up On the News With Summify. We Have Invite Codes! The Next Web. October 24, 2010.