The big news the last couple of days for us Twitter users is that the popular microblogging platform acquired Summize.com for $15 million and Twitter stock. Summize is a Twitter search engine that is able to track topics through keywords. Instead of reinventing the wheel, Twitter was smart and bought the company that was already doing it the best. Summize has since been rebranded as search.twitter.com.
This acquisition will help the popular site establish a viable business model and certainly see an influx of marketers and researchers (social and marketing) joining the fold of users as the stream of consciousness can be more readily used to track what consumers are talking about. Until now, I believe only Radian6 had a tool capable of this sort of tracking. This move allows for ad placement on the search pages, eliminating what would be an outcry of users if Twitter placed ads in their stream or on their pages.
Big news that benefits marketers looking for a way to go where their customers are and more importantly, the users who were seeking the best experience possible. And as we know, Twitter has had its woes in the last year with platform failures made famous by the “Fail Whale” 
Yes, it will definitely be a good thing to see Twitter find a biz model that can sustain them for the long haul. They definitely still hold the momentum despite the technical hiccups and I would hate to see them go away. Hopefully this will set them on the best path.