According to the site Gigatweet , we are about an hour away from the 10 billionth tweet sent since the dawn of Twitter. More incredible, this milestone comes less than 5 months after the 5 billionth tweet . The only problem? It’s not an exact science. Gigatweet isn’t counting to an exact number, but rather is extrapolating out when the 10 billionth tweet will hit based on previous tweet data provided from a range of sources. Most recently, we do know that Twitter is seeing about 50 million tweets per day now , because the service released that information. Other than that, it’s kind of a crapshoot. To determine when the 5 billionth tweet would happen, watchers were looking at the numbers appended on to the URL of each tweet when it’s sent. The same is true this time around. For example, this recent tweet has the number 9996229078 in the URL. So yes, it would seem that is tweet number 9,996,229,078, but the problem is that Twitter has altered these numbers several times over the years, notably to move up the so-called Twitpocalypse (both 1 and 2). As Twitter employee Ryan King notes , “ Though its more numerology than math, it still scares me that this is my job ,” followed by a link to Gigatweet. What he means is that no, it’s not exactly right, but it’s kind of cool, and perhaps close enough. An interesting side note: the guy who sent tweet number 5 billion, Robin Sloan , now works at Twitter. Who will be number 10 billion? We’ll know in about an hour. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase

FriendFeed is down right now. It has been down for the past 30 minutes or so. Sadly, that’s not news anymore. Not because, like Twitter of old, it’s down all the time , but rather, because it seems like no one really uses it anymore . Case in point, it’s been down for over 30 minutes and there are maybe 50 total tweets about it (and several are from the same users). That means that of all the tens of millions of people around the world on Twitter, a full 50 of them care enough to tweet when FriendFeed is down. It’s hard to imagine any other service that got to the size FriendFeed did (which, granted, wasn’t huge ), only getting 50 tweets if it goes down. It’s sad, really. FriendFeed was easily one of my favorite services (so much so that I’m still waiting for another service to replace it ). But since the acquisition by Facebook , it has been a ghost town. And now, with its 500 Internal Server Error, it’s really a ghost town. The impressive team behind FriendFeed (most are still with Facebook now) have indicated they wouldn’t let the service wither , but that seems to be exactly what is happening. If it comes back up, I wonder how many of these remaining few dozen passionate FriendFeed users that are tweeting will even notice. Maybe they’ll just give up too. Update : FriendFeed is still down over an hour later. Their official Twitter account blames a “major power outage.” CrunchBase Information FriendFeed Information provided by CrunchBase

This is the last time we write about this, promise. But it turns out that a week before the super-liberal TED crowd was shocked by comedian Sarah Silverman’s repeated use of the word “retarded” on stage (so much so that TED organizer Chris Anderson tweeted how “god-awful” she was ), she had agreed to donate her time to a fundraiser for children with Down syndrome . She was ridiculing Sarah Palin’s whole argument that the word “retard” can’t be used. The crowd, mostly bay area wine and cheese liberals, should have been cheering her on. But it went over their head, and TED stepped in it. So just to recap, TED invites Sarah Silverman, a shock and insult comedian, to the event to give a talk. She turns up and shocks and insults, but for a good reason. The crowd doesn’t get it even though it plays right into their politics, and the event organizer trashes her publicly. Silverman hits back on Twitter, and there’s a quick cameo by Steve Case in the whole drama. Then it turns out Silverman is already donating her time to help fight the very issue she brought up in the talk. In honor of the whole episode, TechCrunch is purchasing 10 tickets to Twenty Wonder on March 6 in Los Angeles on behalf of TED and Chris Anderson. If you’d like one of the tickets, let us know below and the first ten get them (say if you want two to bring a friend). Or buy your own. It’ll go to a much better cause than the $6,000 TED attendees spend to feel good about themselves for a couple of days.

The first installment of Google’s fancy Nexus One design series focused on the sound quality of the device, and on the overall design. Well, part two is here now, and this time, we get to watch while HTC project manager Tomasz Hasinki and Android software engineer Romain Guy give us the goods on the Nexus One ’s OLED display and the interactive, 3D framework. We’re expecting a couple more videos in the series, so grab a very tiny bowl of popcorn (it’s pretty short) and check out the video, which is after the break. Continue reading Nexus One video series, part two: Google schools us on OLED displays Nexus One video series, part two: Google schools us on OLED displays originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink    |  Google Nexus One YouTube Channel  |  Email this  |  Comments

Zynga investor Fred Wilson remained mostly quiet during the Scamville debacle in October. But he’s starting to talk now, and he isn’t happy. In a post about Etsy a few days ago a commenter brought up the Zynga/Scamville stuff. Wilson replied “Citing techcrunch on the zynga stuff is a joke.” He waded into the subject again today on another of his posts , saying in a number of comments “i’ve tried hard to stay out of that debate because it is a false debate…zynga makes almost all of its revenue on virtual goods…the “scammy ads” thing is total red herring that everyone got excited about but is almost entirely irrelevant” and “nobody who got involved in that shitstorm took the time to really do the work and look at what Zynga did and did not do. or compare it to Google and everyone else who does way worse on a daily basis…the whole thing totally annoys me. it’s not fair.” He also said numerous times that we didn’t have our facts straight, and that we didn’t take the time to understand what really happened. Hogwash. Fred Wilson is a brilliant investor, but he’s conflicted and wrong yet again. There were a total of 22 Scamville posts (see updates) on TechCrunch alone. For the most part we left Zynga alone, until we were slammed in the face with CEO Mark Pincus on video saying “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues” (how do you take that statement out of context?). Pincus also said “we need to be more aggressive and have revised our service level agreements with these providers requiring them to filter and police offers” in a post about Scamville. And Facebook took one of their games offline for a few days for a violation of their terms of service around scammy offers. Zynga had claimed in the past that fully 1/3 of their revenue came from offers. Some of that wasn’t legitimate, likely tens of millions of dollars, and other companies have said that the bad stuff tended to push out the good stuff. There is an excellent argument that you can continue to find most of these scams on Google and other search engines. But a big difference is the incentive that social games give users to enter into these scams via virtual currency, as well as the fact that they targeted teens without credit cards by pushing mobile subscription offers. Google is wrong to post these ads. But that doesn’t make what Zynga has done right. I think Pincus took the right steps to move his company in the right direction, and I think the industry is on the right track now, and Zynga looks to be a legitimate business even without scammy offers. I support Pincus as an entrepreneur. But to deny that there was ever a problem is irresponsible. And to suggest that we didn’t take the time to understand the facts is outrageous. In addition to the 22 posts where we spoke to dozens of sources on and off the record, I asked Pincus to go on video with me to tell his side of the story without editing. He declined. Zynga continues to be a very close partner to Facebook. They share a major investor, DST . A facebook board member, Marc Andreessen , is also an investor in Zynga. And Zynga is Facebook’s largest advertiser. The fates of these two companies are deeply aligned, and there has been more than a little evidence of wrongdoing. The relationship between Zynga and Facebook needs more scrutiny, not less. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0