Internet, Micro Blogging | featured news

There have now been more than 20 billion tweets since Twitter (Twitter)’s inception, according to tracking service GigaTweet. The milestone comes just two months after the service hit 15 billion tweets and about five months since it reached 10 billion, indicating that activity levels on the microblogging service continue to accelerate.

Privately held microblogging service Twitter has agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over charges that it put customers privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information.

If you're a frequent Twitter user, you've probably noticed that the microblogging site has been crashing repeatedly this week.

Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reader is getting access to Facebook and Twitter, along with several other enhancements, as part of a software update being sent wirelessly to the devices.

In a posting on Amazon's site, the company says the new software will let users share book passages on their Twitter and Facebook accounts. The update will also let people sort books and documents into collections and lock their Kindle with a password. There also will be larger font options and the ability to zoom in on PDF documents.

Black people make up 25% of Twitter users, compared to just 12% of the population. Why?

Twitter's homepage got a new look Tuesday, featuring a scrolling list of "top tweets" designed to give non-members a look at what they're missing.

A Conan O'Brien Twitter account surfaced this evening under the name @ConanOBrien and it is growing rapidly.

So did Conan O'Brien just join Twitter?

At first, it wasn't certain, but just an hour and a half after the inaugural tweet, Twitter added a "verified account" stamp to the page.

Conan's first tweet, posted at approximately 6 p.m. Feb. 24, 2010, said: "Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me."

Yahoo! and the micro-blogging site Twitter have struck a content-sharing deal, they announced Wednesday -- a plan that will share real-time tweets with the 600 million users in Yahoo's global network.

It seems as though Twitter is finally ready to get down to business. Following search deals with Microsoft and Google that put the company at break even for 2009 and the recent hiring of a CFO, Twitter is now said to be readying the launch of its long-rumored ad platform.

Twitter just announced that it now sees 50 million non-spam messages every day. That's interesting but it means more when you look at it in context.