That being said, one of the docs details how Twitter expect to grow to 1,000,000,000 registered users by 2013 with revenue of $1.5bn, a staff of 5,000 and earnings of over $1bn. Not bad for a company that today generates little revenue (less than $1m) and has a staff of approx 50….

I wont post the docs here but it’s also worth noting that Twitter is taking legal advice after hundreds of documents have now been published on TechCrunch and other blogs.

Google Chrome - taking on IE, Safari and FF

Google, the search company, will soon be known as Google, the software company.  New has emerged from the valley that the Google geeks are working on a super light OS based on the Chrome web browser.  Google Chrome OS will be aimed initially at small, low-cost netbooks, but will eventually be used on PCs as well.  Google said netbooks with Chrome OS could be on sale by the middle of 2010. “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS,” the firm said in its official blog.  The operating system, which will run on an open source licence, was a “natural extension” of its Chrome browser, the firm said.

“We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you on to the web in a few seconds,” said the blog post written by Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management, and Google’s engineering director Linus Upson.   Both men said that “the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web” and that this OS was “our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be”.

Over at TechCrunch, MG Siegler said: “Let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of all bombs on its rival, Microsoft.”

Tweetdeck app for Twitterfans

With Twitter rising up the visitor charts fast than Britney spears ever rode the Pop 40, could we see Rupert Murdoch make a play? Apple have been mentioned as a suitor, along with Google, Microsoft and Facebook, but so far Evan Williams and Biz Stone (great name btw) have said no to everyone… Maybe when someone offers Obvious a billion $$$ we’ll see a new owner. As a user, I’m a fan of Twitter but as Search tool is where it’s real power comes into play. If you’ve not checked out these Twitter apps yet, get busy. Tweetdeck. TwitterVision.

Back to the main reason for this post - According to Compete.com here’s the visitor counts for the top 3 social networking sites/tools:

• Twitter: 19,728,000 Up 1000% (last 12 months)
• MySpace: 56,885,000 Down 5.61% (last 12 months)
• Facebook: 113,014,000 Up 253% (last 12 months)

20 Million Tweeters vs. 57 Million music moguls on MySpace means the Twitter guys have a way to go, but with the buzz and spotlight on Twitter at the moment - everyone from Obama to Oprah to Sarah Pallin to The_Real_Shaq are regular tweeters… Means Twitter cannot be ignored…

Kindle 2.0

No data has been released yet from Amazon showing how many subscribers, or what percentage of owners are subscribing/paying for content other than the regular Ebook downloads. B2B publishers will be licking their chops at the possibility of charging for content I’m sure.

hulu visitor

Whilst Hulu is at the top end of the scale (most companies could only dream about launching less than 12 months ago and have 370 million streams!), a vexxing problem for smaller companies is who to trust to count the data. Personally, I love Omniture, sure it’s expensive, but the details behind the numbers are amazing and can really help sway a sceptical ad-buyer. Google Analytics seems to be coming along quite nicely, typical of Google, they’re adding addtional features every month, and also typical to Google, it’s free - and that’s a price many will find hard to argue with.

Web publishers are never entirely happy with the online ratings they receive from measurement companies. Their internal numbers, collected via clicks to their servers, are almost always higher than the third-party estimates. But the third-party figures act as the currency for promoting sites and selling ads, making them the lifeblood of the industry. Given the growing importance of video advertising, the numbers are coming under more scrutiny. While video ads are only a tiny portion of online ad spending in the United States, the research firm eMarketer projects that they will account for more than a billion dollars of spending this year, up from $734 million last year. “To the extent that the actual success is undercounted, it reduces confidence among advertisers to spend more dollars,” said Murgesh Navar, the founder of VoloMedia, an advertising firm that specializes in online and portable audio and video.

Source:NYTimes

Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair, not normally known for it’s coverage of the media world has a great article detailing how it’s team of editors think the upcoming extinction level event in the media world will shake out.

The result: blogs like Utasaint will survive, big, ex-print titles such as NYTimes.com will go the way of the Wooly Mammoth. Not a bad result for me, pretty much an Epic>Fail for the big dogs over the WSJ and NYTimes!

Vanity Fair Magazine - Scarlett Johanson Naked Front Cover

Microsoft are getting hip to the now with the Beta launch of Vine, a service which “C

I’m liking that Microsoft have joined the social party before Google (the new Microsoft!) get in and create a service with contextual ads all over the place… Watch this space for Microsoft Vine news…

Here’s what The Sun is reporting:
Experts predict that, at first, computers will go off-line for several minutes at a time. But by 2012, booming consumer demand plus bandwidth-hungry sites such as YouTube will see the web becoming sluggish and “unreliable”.

In related news, The Sun also reported Peter Andre (who?) had to carry is wife Jordon (again, who?) over the finish line at this weekends London marathon. Slow news day I guess!

Gumball 3000 - Ferrari 360

Mika Salo the former F1 driver that is taking part in this years coast to coast rally. Mika will be showing the other racers, sorry, “it’s a rally” how to drive in his Ferrari GT2 430-the same race car he won the 2008 24 hours of Le Mans for team Risi Competizione.

The 2009 Gumball Rally will take place in 17 days on May 1st kicking off LA and heading to destinations such as Las Vegas, Dallas , New Orleans , and ending in Miami on the 8th of May. In total there are 3000 miles to be traveled and over 100 participants. Other notable drivers for the event include Tony Hawk, Dave Mirra , Bam Margera, and Ryan Dunn.