New Twitter email summaries may be the first sign of Summify at work

Twitter looks like it is putting Summify, the social feed summary tool it acquired in January, to use after a new service that recaps the most popular stories from users’ timelines was spotted in the wild.

Twitter has more than 500 million registered accounts, according to Twopcharts, and with the number of tweets increasingly daily, round-up services like Summify are a good way of keeping up with news that got ‘caught in the noise’.

The new summary email from Twitter looks much like the wrap-up report that summary sends out to its members, as these comparative screenshots from Josh Davis of LLSocial:

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Twitter hasn’t just copied Summify’s style over in its entirety, as it has added a couple of tweaks designed to increase user interaction with Twitter, and give the email even greater value to its recipients.

In addition to rounding up the most popular and shared links from Davis’s Twitter friends, in the style of Summify, Twitter’s email also compiles a list of the top 5 tweets that were popular over the course of the last day, but that don’t have links in them.

This list of tweets is clearly designed an encouraging greater interaction with the service, allowing users to favourite, retweet or look at response by viewing the tweet on Twitter.

It isn’t exactly clear how users can sign-up for the email, as the company is yet to announce its existence. For now it looks like the service has gone to a select few, possibly those on the Summify mailing list.

Many people were concerned that Twitter might look to close down Summify, after it bought the Vancouver-based startup, but the introduction of this email, which we assume is coming soon, looks like a very smart move.

After the deal, rival services like news.me made a big play for Summify’s users with a massive revamp, but Twitter is looking to gain control of the space with its own offering.

Last year I complained that Twitter’s newly introduced Activity Tab wasn’t doing enough to share activity on the site and, as a user of news.me and Summify, I’m looking forward to this new email service.

We’ve reached out for Twitter for clarification and will update this article with any response that we receive.