Twitter is close to raising $800 million in funding. About $400 million of this round would be used to allow investors and employees cash out on their stock. This transaction may be completed within the next two weeks according to sources with AllThingsD.

Larry Summers was the U.S. Secretary of Treasury under President Bill Clinton and served as the 27th President of Harvard University. Actor Douglas Urbanski played Summers in the hit movie “The Social Network. Those of you that have seen the movie will know that Summers dismissed Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss when they presented him with the case that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea. The real Larry Summers told his side of the story and he did not have kind words about the twins.

Today Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has released Mac OS X Lion on the Mac App Store. The new operating system can be purchased for $29.99. Some of the new features include Multi-Touch gestures, full screen app support, Mission Control, LaunchPad, and a redesigned version of the Mail application.

Kickstarter has reached their 10,000th funded project! In addition, TechCrunch reports that Kickstarter has funded as many projects in the last month as in the company’s entire first year, and there are more than 300 projects submitted each day. For a little over two years as a company, Kickstarter is performing beautifully. Their celebratory blog post announces a 44% success rate for Kickstarter projects, most of which are music or film & video.

The US government plans to shut down 800 of its 2000 computer data centers over the next four years. The New York Times reports that the 40% cutback will allow the federal government to reduce their technology budget and to update their systems. The change could mean saving $5 billion a year, according to chief information officer Vivek Kundra, as the centers scheduled to close are “redundant systems.”

Quepasa, the Latin audience-focused social network, has merged with myYearbook. The deal is $82 million in stock and $18 million in cash, and the merger brings the duo to 70 million combined registered users. Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook, joins Quepasa’s board of directors as Chief Operating Officer and president of the consumer internet division. Quepasa CEO John Abbott will remain at the head of the company. [TechCrunch]

Hulu is still looking for a buyer, and the potential buyers are still looking for some promises of future content access before they make any moves. Hulu has stepped forward with a promise of 5 years of content, two years of which will be exclusive, from Disney, News Corp. and NBC. [Bloomberg]

Ness Computing has been working on creating a selective search engine, and have raised $5 million in funding. The investors include Vinod Khosla and Ramy Adeeb (of Khosla Ventures), Alsop Louie Partners, Bullpen Capital and a co-founder of Palantir Technologies, as well as angel investors. TechCrunch reports that the search engine will be located at likeness.com, and combines data from your online likes with a search engine to provide a search designed with your preferences in mind. Corey Reese, CEO of Ness, explains that while Google organized data, likeness.com is about “organizing opportunities.”