The Twitter analytics team is sharing some of their usage data and its a beautiful example of exponential growth.

Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. [ ... ] Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.

Tweets per day is just one number, but a pretty interesting one to look at.

Twitter Blog: Measuring Tweets.

Is it cool? Sure.
Will i blog about it? Yea.
But will I use this to find out about cool stuff? No.

Sharing Stream, Real-time Sharing, Trending Shares – ShareThis Stream.

1. DonorsChoose Crate & Barrel Gift certificates.
2. Target Gives the check to Facebook
3. Ford Helps Invisible People across America
4. Stonyfield Farms Says ‘Have a Cow’
5. The Pepsi Refresh Project

This is  more then company just writing a check to a group or organization. This is about getting people involved in programs, creating/raising awareness and making a difference.

This types of moves can humanize a brand, and give people a reason to care about it beyond what they actually make.

For details on the 5 campaigns, read the full article

Nobody walks around with a Twitter follower count or blog URL painted on his or her forehead, and many extremely popular bloggers still live in relative physical anonymity, which means that the customer relations business is like a game of Minesweeper–you can never be sure what might blow up in your face.

This line came in response to the recent blowup when Southwest airlines kicked a passenger off their plane for being too fat. And as it were, this overweight individual was actor, director, writer, blogger Kevin Smith.

Full story

The best way to get on BuzzFeed’s front page is to make something that has a high chance of going viral. Have a look at our most viral posts to get a sense of what works. Then use these tips to help you create something that is just viral as all hell.

1. Don’t Just Link
2. Make Lists And Quizzes
3. Find An Angle
4. Share!
5. Start a Channel

See what what just happened there? They made a list and now I am sharing it.

How To Get on BuzzFeed’s Front Page!!: Pics, Videos, Links, News.

Ad.ly’s platform is designed to be self-service for both Twitter users and the advertisers. So for example, an advertiser for Dell could choose which Twitter power-user to pitch their ad too and then submit a bid to a particular user. The publisher then approves or denies the request. Once the publisher approves the Tweet, the message is sent out via their account by Ad.ly.

Will be interesting to see if this service picks up, but I imagine most people wont mind inserting a sponsored tweet now and again if they can pick, especially for a little $$.

Ad.ly Launches Self Serve Platform For Advertisers To Push Sponsored Tweets.

This system is apparently called zero-rated pages, and allows operators to use a trimmed down version of a web application as a sort of teaser, driving the adoption of certain mobile services or apps, and more data usage revenue down the line.

Facebook Launches Zero, A Text-Only Mobile Site For Carriers.

Relevant tweets, blog posts, comments in a traditional news website, or trend reports can be pulled directly into a team community with designated places for specific topics and focus areas from the brand monitoring tool (such as competitors, industries, or product lines).

The team community is now the central place where virtual, topic-specific “war rooms” engage the broader team and facilitate collaborative decision-making.

Sounds like a pretty cool tool, love to see it in action sometime.

Boxee is being marketed as a  ‘Social Media Center’, enabling users to view, rate, recommend their own media in addition to a variety of internet sources. From Flickr to Twitter to your DVD collection Boxee can handle it all.

From Mark Cuban

The concept of “users always want choice” really really sounds nice. It makes for a great panel argument. But the reality is that its not true. Ultimate choice requires work. Consumers like to think they have choice, but their consumption habits say they prefer easy.

From Avner Ronen

Innovation in the living room will not come from the set-top makers or the networks. if you would like to see the wild creativity of the Internet come to the TV screen, well you need to let the Internet come to the TV screen.

An enlightening read.
For anyone who is curious to see where TV is going, and what some of the hurdles that lay ahead I highly recommend reading the full conversation.

Read the debate : http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/03/21/a-lively-debate-with-mark-cuban/

Review of what Boxee is : http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/theres-something-about-boxee/

Thus creating a user-name that is also concise is of value. It can be easier for people to remember. It takes up less space when people are ‘retweeting’ things that you have said. It takes up less characters when someone is going to send you a message.

If only there was a way to see what small Twitter names were still available. Enter Little-Twit.

Little-Twit.com keeps a list of all the available one, two, three and four letter user-names. All of the one letter names are gone and most of the 2 letter names are gone as well, just 21 left. Plenty of three and four letter ones left though!

Give a check before they are all gone.
See for yourself : http://www.little-twit.com/