Rumor has it that Chicago-based Groupon, which offers local deals online, is raising another round of capital with a new valuation of $1.35 billion. Last December, when the start-up closed a Series B round worth $30 million, it was valued at just $250 million. It's no wonder that the company -- backed by Accel Partners and New Enterprise Associates -- has inspired countless imitators. ,br> The company offers deep discounts on local deals on everything from spas and sky diving lessons to hotels and restaurants. Discounts range from 40% to 90% of the normal price. If enough people buy …

Twitter news -- much of which has broad industry implications -- has been coming fast and furious from the company's Chirp developer conference this week. Along with its AdSense-like monetization model, the microblogging service revealed some eye-opening user metrics. To wit, Twitter says it has over 105 million registered users who write 55 million posts a day; it's adding roughly 300,000 users a day; and its site now attracts some 180 million monthly visits. "In addition to an explosion of users, Twitter is fielding 600 million search queries each day," reports The Los Angeles Times. The …

In an example, Twitter confirmed that it will be launching an "official" Twitter application for Google Android devices. "Evan Williams ... said that the company had decided to make its own Twitter clients because new users were finding it difficult to find the right software," reports The U.K. Telegraph. Sorry, independent developers.

Regarding said controversy, the company also unveiled several new features, some of which will compete directly with services already offered by start-ups that -- perhaps naively -- considered Twitter a "friend." Case in point, Twitter chief exec Evan Williams confirmed plans to launch its own link shortener, explaining that it would be "stupid" not to add native link-shortening capabilities. "It is not clear how the new feature will affect bit.ly, the third-party link shortener Twitter currently uses as its default, but it sounds like that may change soon."

In light of "surprisingly strong" demand for the iPad, Apple has been forced to postpone its oversees launch by a month. But, while the development all but confirms iPad's early success, the device's long-term prospects remain an open question. Convinced that this is "a very positive sign for Apple," blogger Robert Scoble says: "It means that the iPad is moving outside of the 'Apple faithful' very quickly, which I have also observed in the stores ... The people I met buying iPads a few days later from the opening were quite different than those of us waiting in line." …

Never one to shy away from big projects, Google is making every Tweet ever Tweeted on Twitter searchable. The feature is expected to be available worldwide in the next few days, and while it presently only goes back two months, it is eventually expected to include every tweet dating back to the first one on March 21, 2006. "This is the next step in the product evolution of making this type of content available," Dylan Casey, Google's product manager for real-time search, tells The Los Angeles Times. "We're really excited to give users the ability to replay a conversation." Thinking …

Google just upgraded its Google Docs editors, which, according to eWeek, rewrites the apps' code with HTML5 and accelerates the apps to improve the user experience. Of key importance, the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation apps have also been optimized for Google Android, Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry smartphones. "For the most part, the Docs viewing experience should [be] as good on smartphones as it is on the desktop, thanks largely to the Docs rewrite," Anil Sabharwal, enterprise product manager for Google Docs tells eWeek. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently encouraged enterprises to consider mobile devices first when building their …

Upon visiting Facebook's brand-new Palo Alto offices, Om Malik had a few revelations regarding the relationship between the social network and Twitter. For better or worse, he says, "The future of these two companies are intertwined! They are the Kane & Abel of our new pulsating two-way, near-real-time Internet ... Together, they dominate the zeitgeist." Rather than coexisting peacefully, however, Malik believes that Facebook and Twitter are "competing for essentially what is the next evolution of the Internet: The People Web." What's more, Twitter's presence conflicts directly with Facebook's vision of the Web, i.e., a Web where every action and …

Greycroft Partners just closed its second fund. Dubbed Greycroft II, it has $130.7 million to burn, and is led by Greycroft founder Alan Patricof, Dana Settle and Drew Lipsher, along with Ian Sigalow, who was promoted to partner. "It's a case of second verse, same as the first with plans to continue investing in early-stage digital media companies that deliver products and services online or through a wireless device," reports paidContent. Settle will reportedly continue to run the LA office, while the others will still be based in New York. The key different between the two funds, notes paidContent, is …

Blogger Robert Scoble talks with Loic Le Meur, CEO of Twitter client Seesmic, about the pressures of operating in such a volatile ecosystem. Making Seesmic's prospects more uncertain, "Twitter [recently] announced it will compete with the client partners [including Seesmic] it so famously enabled," Scoble notes. As The New York Times reported earlier this week: "Developers fear that if Twitter's engineers build the same features that they have, Twitter could transform overnight from generous benefactor to arch competitor to their start-ups." Taking the side of the developers and startups, Scoble suggests that Twitter should have given the upstarts more notice, …