Attention all Twitter-focused search experts: Having successfully served a billion queries, the top micro-blogging platform has made some serious changes to its back-end search software. "It's a change to the actual 'engine' that lets you search, the software that takes your query, hunts through billions of tweets and brings back answers," writes Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan. What do the changes mean for non-search experts? More reliable searches, for one. "Twitter says its new technology will last it for years and has enough horsepower to handle 50 times the amount of data that currently flows in via …

We know (!) you've heard this one before, but sources tell The Wall Street Journal that Apple will release an iPhone for Verizon Wireless customers early next year. According to The Journal, mounting competition from Google and its Android mobile operating system has inspired Apple to finally break its exclusive carrier relationship with AT&T. Indeed, "While Apple is on track to sell 40 million iPhones across the globe this year, the touchscreen handset is facing pressure in the U.S. from phones running Google's Android software, which have been heavily promoted by Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. carrier …

What would life be like without Foursquare? The world found out Monday when the location-based social network went down due to technical difficulties -- not atypical for fast-growing startups, but still concerning at a time when Facebook and other rivals would gladly take its place.Total downtime was around 11 hours all told," reports TechCrunch. "That's not good."Certainly if Foursquare wants to be the platform for location, addressing both the tech and the communication will be crucial," writes ReadWriteWeb.Indeed, "The app is facing increasing competition from the social networking giant Facebook, which recently launched a feature called Places that …

With Google TV hot on its heels, Apple appears to be achieving early success with its latest Web TV offering. Indeed, the Apple TV boxes are selling out in many of the company's U.S. retail stores, according to JMP Research analyst Alex Gauna. In a note, the analyst reports that "the new Apple TV product has continued to sell out in Apple stores across the nation after its launch last week." In the words of Barron's Tech Trader Daily, "Apple seems to have a modest hit on its hands with the new Apple TV box." According to Gauna: "We …

Montreal "Internet marketer" Adam Guerbuez has been ordered by a Quebec court to pay Facebook over $1 billion in spamming fines. The judgment, rendered in absentia, fined Guerbuez $100 U.S. in damages and an additional $100 U.S. in punitive damages for each of the 4,366,386 spam messages that Facebook said he posted on users' walls in 2008, according to The Montreal Gazette. The fines amount to $873,277,200, which was converted to $1,068,928,721,46, in Canadian funds, according to the exchange at the time of the judgment. "Facebook alleges the messages promoted medication to treat erectile dysfunction, among other ailments," according …

Doing his best to dispel acquisition rumors, Twitter's newly named CEO Dick Costolo tells the Telegraph: "No, I am not prepping Twitter for a sale." Still, as The Telegraph notes, Costolo is no stranger to selling out. He sold Feedburner to Google for a rumored $100 million in 2007 and, prior to that, sold web-monitoring service SpyOnIt to 724 Solutions in 2000. But, insists Costolo, "There really is no distinction between the way [Evan Williams] and I think about the company. We both want Twitter to be a successful independent company. We've both done that selling a start-up thing …

Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber has "extremely high user-interface standards and a strong preference toward Apple products," according to Business Insider. That's what makes Gruber's comments -- via podcast -- about Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Phone 7 all the more remarkable. After playing with a Windows prototype phone for 5 minutes at a cocktail party last week, Gruber's first impressions were "very, very favorable." Indeed, "It was really nice," said a "really impressed" Gruber. Specifically, the software-based keyboard is "fantastic," and, as Business Insider notes, "This was a big problem with the Google/HTC Nexus One when Gruber tested …

With millions of page views and ad dollars hanging in the balance, Google is testing a feature that lets users view search results without having to click through. "If you have the feature enabled, simply hover over the magnifying glass alongside a search result and you're given a quick preview," notes The Next Web. "Ingeniously, Google is also able to highlight sections of the page that include the text you've searched for." Plug-ins have facilitated this feature for years, but coming directly from Google, it's far more likely to achieve widespread adoption. "To the user, this is valuable," writes …

AOL announced it will launch a group-buying site, similar to Groupon and a sea of clones, called Wow. The thing that seperates AOL's effort is, of course, its built-in scale and user base. Business Insider gives AOL an A for effort, adn trying to find a way to make money from its decaying corpse, but, says BI, "We're a little surprised AOL would call its Groupon clone 'Wow!,' if only for SEO reasons -- 'WoW' is a very common search term for people looking for World Of Warcraft sites."

"You'll see new slates with Windows on them. You'll see them this Christmas," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience at the London School of Economics. Ballmer had actually unveiled a HP manufactured Windows tablet at this year's Consumer Electronic show, beating Steve Jobs to the punch, but not to market.A few months after CES in Vegas, HP bought Palm and said it was developing a tablet based on Palm's OS, though it did not say it was scrapping the Windows-based device. Ballmer did not offer any specifics beyond the vague "you'll see," nor did he say …