If Mashable's estimates are correct, Twitter is about a day away from recording its 10 billionth tweet. To put that number into some perspective, the top microblogging service hit 1 billion tweets only a year ago, and 5 billion four months ago. In other words, "Although Twitter has been somewhat struggling with traffic (compared to its earlier immense growth) in the last couple of months, it still managed to go from five to ten billion tweets in four months; quite a remarkable achievement." Last time Mashable checked, Twitter was at 9,917,803,012 tweets. "The five billionth (now deleted) …

Giving AT&T a runs for its money, Verizon Wireless just experienced some rather serious data outages involving, "parts, not all, of eastern US." According to the carrier, the outages occurred between 4-8 a.m. on Wednesday morning. For at least a year, rival AT&T has been on the defensive over its spotty national coverage. "There is a data explosion out there," David Christopher, AT&T's chief marketing officer, told The Wall Street Journal in January. "We're also at the bleeding edge of knowing how to deal with it." With its "It's The Network" motto, and goading "There's a Map …

And then there's some speculation that Microsoft could acquire Palm, Forbes reports. Pacific Crest analyst Brendan Barnicle says such a deal is "unlikely" based on a recent discussion he had with Bill Koefoed, who manages Microsoft's investor relations. Rather, Koefoed says Microsoft is planning to invest $1 billion in research and development for Windows Mobile. "Koefoed also noted that the operating system from Palm and Research in Motion both have their own set of development challenges," Barnicle writes. Forbes calls the statement a likely response to claims that Microsoft will have a difficult time building a "meaningful" …

Could, and should, Microsoft by Twitter? Mary-Jo Foley raises the questions in ZDNet's All About Microsoft blog. CEO Steve Ballmer said this week that he's not convinced such a move would make sense for the software giant. "But he didn't say [in an exchange with Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan] Microsoft hadn't considered such a move or that it might not in the future," notes Foley. Furthermore, Ballmer telling Sullivan that the rational for a Twitter deal is "not clear," leads her to speculate that Microsoft may have sniffed around, "and may still be sniffing...." Foley herself …

Will Hulu's success be its downfall? In the surest sign yet, Viacom has decided to remove Comedy Central television shows -- including "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," and "The Colbert Report" -- from Hulu next week. "It looks like the popularity of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report may actually have contributed to the removal," writes Fast Company. "Viacom was unsatisfied with the revenue generated from those two shows in spite of their immense viewerships." Likewise, Viacom was "unable to make the digital media dollars add up to their liking," …

TechCrunch, which describes its relationship with the PR industry as "love hate," has never had any love for embargoes -- which require publishers to refrain from publishing news stories until a particular time and date. The blog has now posted the second in what is looking like a series of satirical videos created by TechCrunch Europe contributing editor Steve O'Hear, which clearly illustrates why some publishers hate embargoes. Part 1

For the month of March, the Mayor of Topeka, Kansas has issued a proclamation that his city be known as 'Google, Kansas -- The capital city of fiber optics.' No, Mayor Bill Bunten hasn't lost his mind. Rather, the proclamation is ploy to attract Google, which is still seeking a test site for its high-speed broadband experiment. As Topeka's name cannot legally be provisionally changed to 'Google,' the proclamation instead calls on residents to refer to the city as 'Google' until April. The search giant announced plans in early February to build and test new high-speed broadband networks …

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just awarded Google a patent for using location in an advertising system -- "which," according to VentureBeat, "is the emerging business model for most consumer-facing location startups today." Filed six years ago, the industry blog describes the patent as "fairly broad," as it "covers using location for targeting, setting a minimum price bid for an ad, offering performance analytics, and modifying the content of an ad." Along many of its rivals, location-based search and advertising has become a top priority for Google. How this development will impact Google's rivals, however, is …

Twitter has extended access to its data "firehose" to seven lucky startups. Until now, only industry titans like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have had full access to all of Twitter's tweets. Startups -- including Ellerdale, Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup, CrowdEye, and Chainn -- are "focused mainly on exploring the incredibly rich field of real-time search and discovery," according to Twitter's platform director Ryan Sarver. "These companies range from funded startups to part-time, one-person operations so we came up with a fair way to license access that scales with their business." To date, Twitter has been quite open …

It's not what is described among Silicon Valley insiders as "Google money," but developers are profiting from their involvement with the search giant's Android operating system. One Android developer is reportedly earning over $400 a day from his find-your-car application, Car Locator. It works by recording when one parks -- using a mobile phone's embedded GPS -- then alerts them when the meter needs feeding, and provides a distance and direction to guide them back to their ride. According to The Register, it's been selling in the Android Marketplace for the last five months, and is now …