Twitter, a blogging and social networking Web site recently acquired search engine Summize. The announcement came after rumors about the deal were reported for several weeks.

Summize’s founder Jay Verdy will leave the company in order to focus on other projects while the rest of employees will continue working for Twitter.

Earlier this week, a message on the official Twitter Blog stated: "We're excited to announce that Twitter has acquired Summize - an extraordinary search tool and an amazing group of engineers. All five Summize engineers will move to San Francisco, CA and take jobs at Twitter, Inc. this is an important step forward in the evolution of Twitter as a company."

The value of the deal was estimated by Silicon Alley Insider at about $15 million and the transaction was apparently handled mostly in stock.

In a blog post, Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder explained that the acquisition was considered for quite some time now, as his company had “already fallen in love with both the technology and the team” behind Summize.

The Twitter project was started in San Francisco in March 2006 and less than a year later it was already extremely popular, offering users the possibility of sending text-based updates of 1. Users can receive the updates through Twitter’s Web site, or by instant messaging, SMS, email, RSS and through applications such as Facebook.

The company won the 2007 blog category at the 2007 South by Southwest Web Award.