Twitter has hired ex-Google Visual Design lead Douglas Bowman as its new creative director. Bowman replaces co-founder Biz Stone. "The Twitter Web page looks pretty simple," Stone told BusinessWeek's Spencer Ante. "But from our perspective the design needs a lot of work." Bowman is a talented designer who used to work at Wired News before moving to Google. "This is a great hire for Twitter, and more proof that Twitter has replaced Facebook as the tech industry's hottest startup," says Ante, adding that Bowman "clearly sees a bigger opportunity at Twitter, not only from a design perspective but perhaps from …

Hulu may have had the biggest surge in unique viewers of any online video site in February (according to comScore) but it's not getting the advertising revenue to match, according to BusinessWeek. The joint venture from News Corp. and NBC Universal also faces several other roadblocks, including limits placed on the service by its parent companies. Analysts are already revisiting their forecasts for ad spending on Hulu and other online video sites this year. BusinessWeek's Douglas MacMillan talks to Screen Digest analyst Arash Amel, who revises his 2009 revenue estimate for Hulu down from $180 million to $120 million. This …

YouTube is planning a redesign that would separate premium and long-form programming from the user-posted videos which make up the bulk of activity on the online video sharing site in an attempt to draw more advertisers. Sources tell ClickZ that the new design will eliminate the current navigation scheme, with its "videos," "channels," and "community" categories. These will be replaced with four tabs that clearly define sections for professional content: Movies, Music, Shows and Videos. The first three tabs showcase premium shows, clips and movies from Google's partners; all of these will be monetized with in-stream advertising. The last channel, …

"As its popularity has skyrocketed, Twitter has quickly become an indispensable tool for nearly any event," says TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid. But thus far, Twitter has lacked a tool that could help users understand an event more comprehensively, something that would enable them to input a bucket of keywords to follow that event. Glam Media is launching just such a tool. Called Tinker, Kincaid describes the service as "a persistent search for multiple keywords" on Twitter. Each event is associated with terms that Tinker then searches for across all tweets, presenting the results in a single stream. Kincaid uses March Madness …

Google is following other Silicon Valley firms in launching its own venture capital arm. On Monday the search giant formally unveiled Google Ventures, which will be funded with $100 million in its first year. "But wait," says CNet's Stephen Shankland, "isn't there a recession?" Indeed, the National Venture Capital Association just reported that fourth quarter investments dropped 71% from $11.7 billion in 2007 to $3.4 billion in 2008. But that doesn't phase Google. The search giant has said it's confident of its cash position and ability to handle the recession. "Also," says Shankland, "a down economy is a good time …

PaidContent reports that The Walt Disney Company and Google are close to settling a series of programming deals with Google's YouTube that would see clips from ESPN, ABC and other Disney properties appear on the Web's largest video sharing site. The blog has also learned that a YouTube deal would preclude a deal with Hulu, the joint video venture from News Corp. and NBC Universal. As part of the arrangement, Disney and YouTube would share revenue, with Disney controlling the ad inventory, although Google could get some inventory to sell, too. YouTube would also refer traffic back to Disney's properties. …