"Twitter boasts 200 million users and 350 billion tweets per day, and it's a ubiquitous reference on mainstream TV. Visit Twitter today, and it's a hive of frenetic activity. Millions of people rely on the service for news, commentary, blog updates and social interaction. Twitter is about to close an $800 million funding round, which values the company at about $8 billion.

"To avoid a defamation suit, a man in Malaysia has settled with lawyers saying he will tweet 100 times over the next 3 days that he's sorry for defaming a magazine company. Realizing the mistake in an original tweet, the man issued an apology tweet. That was not acceptable to the company, and the company (also his employer) pursued the matter with lawyers which demanded he place ads in newspapers.

A second, posted on Facebook soon afterward, read as follows:

"1.2 billion Twitter 'tweets' were analyzed over two months by analytics company Sysomos, who concluded that a whopping 71% of them got no reaction whatsoever — no online responses, and no Twitter 'retweets.' 'Only a small number of users actually have the ability to engage on Twitter in a significant way,' the researchers conclude, noting that just 6% of Twitter's status updates ever get retweeted (while 23% get a reply).

A twitter was send tonight about this new awesome Crysis 2 footage from Gamescom that proves to be a sizzling hot video worth watching. Check it out!

A little birdy said there are new cats on Wednesday.. 

"RT @OmegaNemesis28: @CatalystMaker do we have a date for 10.8 at all if you mind me asking? ME - yes, this Wed is our target" | More

Social networking is a social phenomenon.

For further proof, just take a gander at new Nielsen research out today. It says Americans spend nearly a quarter of the time they're on the Internet from their PC, or about six hours a month, on social-networking sites and blogs. That's a quantum leap from a year ago and underscores the growing power of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Android 2.1+ Two weeks ago, Twitter announced it was developing its own official Android app. Today, that client was released. You can find it now in the Android Market. [link] There's been a bit of gnashing of teeth over whether Twitter is effectively stabbing outside developers in the back. But after just a few minutes with the app, that's certainly not the case yet, for a couple reasons.

At the start, critics often said, "Twitter is fun, but it's not useful." At one point @ev responded dryly with, "Neither is ice cream." Things have come a long way in a short time. We recognized potential early but users and platform developers would demonstrate how much more Twitter could be. Fostering an open and increasingly important network is not as easily dismissed as it once was—but it's still fun!