Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Summize

Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet, and Abdur Chowdhury Leaves Twitter Board

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:45:51 +0000

The board of directors at Twitter has been shaken up. Two high-profile investors Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson are leaving the company board of directors. Twitter’s chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury is also stepping down.

“Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson both played important and greatly appreciated roles in our success. Both saw what Twitter could become before most anyone else. We look forward to their continued input as both investors in the company and passionate users of the product,” said Twitter in a statement to AllThingsD.

Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Sabet of Spark Capital were both early investors at Twitter. Spark and Union Square have both sold equity in Twitter through secondary market sales, but both companies continue holding a majority stake in Twitter.

Chowdhury announced his departure from Twitter on Twitter yesterday. Chowdhury joined Twitter through the acquisition of Summize. As the chief scientist of Twitter, Chowdhury worked on Twitter Search and Recommendations at the company. Before Summize, Chowdhury worked as chief architect of search at AOL.

[AllThingsD]

Twitter CTO Greg Pass Leaves The Company

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 21 May 2011 20:46:01 +0000

Twitter CTO Greg Pass has left the company. Pass was the VP of Engineering at Twitter and was the co-founder of Summize. Summize is a Twitter search engine that was acquired by the micro-blogging company in July 2008. Summize is now the basis of Twitter Search.

Before starting Summize, Pass was a Systems Architect at AOL. Pass helped build Twitter’s development team from about a dozen engineers to over 100. Twitter currently is not looking for a replacement.

Twitter Search To Be Rolled Into The User Homepage

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:48:24 +0000

Twitter is gaining traction at an alarming rate. The company has $55 million in funding and the user base is growing by the millions. Twitter users include celebrities, politicians, VCs, surgeons, entrepreneurs, etc. One of Twitter’s biggest features is their search engine. Thousands of people are using it everyday to find the latest topic trends. Earlier today Twitter Search was added to the homepage of several limited users.

“Searching over Twitter messages is like a filter for what is happening right now—it’s an interesting look into the real-time thoughts of people and organizations around the world,” stated Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. “Whether you’re curious about something specific or you just want to browse the trending topics, we’ve found that Twitter Search adds a new layer of relevance.”

All I can say is that Twitter may be a good search engine for people to use to find news about trends. After all people reporting news may be a better source than any algorithm can put together. I think we may have found a legitimate Google News competitor.

Twitter Search was created after the company acquired Summize.

Fail Whale Swallows Summize For $15 Million (Cash+Stock)

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:40:26 +0000

Everyone’s favorite fail-whale, micro-blogging company, Twitter bought Summize today. The transaction was paid mostly in stock. Summize was basically a search engine for Twitter conversations. When a topic became popular on Twitter, Summize would list them on the bottom.

Here is a before and after picture of Summize:

Before (Note: Summize is highlighted in yellow because I grabbed the screenshot from the cached page on Google)

After

Through the acquisition, Twitter will be hiring 5 out of 6 of the Summize engineers. The Summize engineers will be moving to San Francisco. Greg Pass, Summize’s CTO will become Twitter’s Director of Engineering and Ops. Maybe Summize will help get rid of the fail whale and make it more of a success whale.

Related Links:
Silicon Alley Insider
Twitter
Summize (Now known as Twitter Search)