About a year ago, Twitter had processed about 1 billion tweets total. That was around the same time that the service struggled to stay online and kept showing us the “fail whale.” Within one year later the company processed an additional 4 billion tweets more. The statistics of the tweets being sent are processed by Gigatweet. The 5 billionth tweet was from Robin Sloan who sent out the tweet “Oh lord.”

Twitter had served 1.6 billion tweets up until this past April, indicating that 3.4 billion tweets were sent out in the last 6 months. Five billion tweets requires a lot of processing power and bandwidth. Its a good thing that Twitter has $155 million in venture capital to keep the servers running. Twitter was co-founded by Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey, and Evan Williams in 2006.

Vevo is an upcoming music video website that is being put together by YouTube, Sony Entertainment, and Universal Music. At the end of August, the company CEO Rio Caraeff was rumored to be flying around the world in order to find potential investors at a $300 valuation. And today a press release has been announced about a funding deal.

Abu Dhabi Media Company bought a stake in Vevo and the funding round is rumored to give the company a $300 valuation. Sony and Universal Music both own stake, but Google does not. Google is on a revenue-sharing agreement with Vevo by providing the YouTube massive distribution platform. The full press release is available after the jump.

DailyBooth is a real-time photo blogging website that launched out of Y-Combinator. The website launched this past August and has been receiving a good amount of traffic ever since. Now the company has raised $1 million from investors such as Sequoia Capital, SV Angel (Ron Conway), Betaworks, Kevin Rose, and Caterina Fake (Flickr founder). DailyBooth was co-founded by Ryan Amos and Jon Wheatley.

The service encourages users to send messages along with webcam photos. DailyBooth receives about 6 million monthly visitors and a majority of their visitors are 15-25 year old women. The company said that they plan to use the funding for developing a premium offering and photo-printing distribution platform. Below is a screenshot of the service.

Boy Genius Report gave the hands-on treatment on the Motorola Droid. Based on the screenshots I’ve seen, it looks very similar to an iPhone and the sliding QWERTY keyboard reminds me of a Sidekick. Below are some of the specs:
- Android 2.0 operating system (as predicted)
- Almost as thin as an iPhone 3G S and very thin QWERTY sliding keyboard
- Capacitive display
- The phone is made out of metal and rubber. The keyboard has a soft-touch rubberized finish.
- Each phone will have a desktop charger that comes with it. The charger turns the phone into a Multimedia Station by displaying the local weather and time.

This past July Sarah Palin quit as the governor of Alaska. Initially when she quit, many people speculated was so that she could focus on the next presidential election but Palin said that she wanted to spend more time with her family.

Now the former Alaskan governor is interested in “job inquiries” on professional social network LinkedIn. And she chose the username “governorsarahpalin.”

Palin put her full work experience time-line on the social network too. She listed the Governor of the State of Alaska, the Vice Presidential Candidate of the 2008 Election, the Chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the Mayor of the Town of Wasilla, and the Council Member of the Wasilla City Council. Under education, she put a Bachelor’s degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho which ended up being the fifth college she attended before finishing a degree.

Last month a woman in Alabama bid $63,500 to have dinner with Palin through an eBay auction.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump will soon be married. Jared is the son of real estate mogul Charles Kushner. Jared recently acquired The New York Observer for $10 million. The New York Observer bought Very Short List from IAC in June. Ivanka is the daughter of real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump.

Since the wedding between Jared and Ivanka is coming up, the couple has been planning away on how to set it up. Ivanka decided to turn to Twitter for help in choosing a wedding song.

“Need some help picking a wedding song…send me your thoughts,” tweeted Ivanka. Some of the suggestions Ivanka received includes Ella Fitzgerald’s “At Last” and Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be (Your Crying Shoulder).”

Personally I’d suggest The Apprentice theme song The O’Jays – For The Love Of Money. Between the two, that is a lot of stuff that they will be inheriting so it makes sense in my head.

The Wolfram Alpha search engine is one of the most sophisticated search engines I have ever seen. It is a lot more advanced than Google in doing calculations and solving problems, but it is not as appealing when it comes to searching for websites. The problem is that Wolfram Alpha does not have mainstream appeal, yet the company has still decided to charge $50 for their iPhone application.

The Wolfram Alpha iPhone application plugs into the API of the search engine directly and delivers results at a fast pace. This application seems extremely useful to a financial analyst but not very common for a typical consumer especially considering the price.

When I went directly to the Wolfram Alpha website on the Safari browser on the iPhone, it turns out that the user interface was quite friendly too. Below is a screenshot of what the website looks like on the web browser. Once I find out what the main difference is between the iPhone app and the web version, then I’ll update this post. If you download the app, leave a comment. After the jump is a couple of screenshots of the web version of WolframAlpha.

Over the last few days, there was a media frenzy about Falcon Heene. Falcon is the son of Richard and Mayumi Heene and it was once believed that he was trapped in a basket of a balloon filled with helium. The media went crazy about the story of the silver balloon traveling at a rapid pace while everyone believed the boy was inside.

It turns out that Falcon was in the attic of his house the whole time. Shortly after the boy was discovered to be safe, it was rumored that the whole event was a hoax. The whole incident did end up being a hoax indeed after Falcon mentioned on CNN “We did this for the show.” Gawker paid for the exclusive story about how the hoax was set-up.

It turns out that the hoax was made in order to gain the attention for an upcoming science fiction reality show. The stunt was planned by Richard Heene and Robert Thomas. Now criminal charges will be filed against Falcon’s parents.

The whole time the balloon was in mid-air, the amount of Twitter and Facebook status updates spiked. What are your thoughts about the whole incident? Should Falcon’s parents be punished or not? Leave a comment.