Upon launch, Twitter was hailed for its ability to be used as a realtime search engine by gathering data regarding stories and events as they happened, not waiting several hours (or even days) for data like this to be collated. And the recent 220,000+ tweets per hour during the Iranian elections really showed what a system like this could do.

More and more companies now are focusing on how to better collate realtime data, including Google who are in talks to buy Twitter, many believing only for the realtime search abilities.

A new contender to this market is CrowdEye.com who laucnhed today and promise to be a strong contender in the market, though the company themselves admit they can only index a portion of all content, not everything in its entirety. This isn’t a shock however, as the site is only in its early days and will grow and expand as time goes on.

Take a look at CrowdEye by clicking here.

Undeniable nerd heartthrob Olivia Munn has been a popular little thing lately co-hosting Attack Of The Show, and now she’s going to be starring alongside a certain Mr. Downey Jr. in the next folm incarnation of Marvel’s ever-popular hero in red armour.

While she’s not playing War Machine in the movie as she so comically tweeted about on her Twitter account, she will definitely have a role in there somewhere, though it’s not confirmed yet exactly who she’ll be playing or the exact size of the role.

So, are we looking forward to seeing her on screen? Well, it will be something to look out for, though not the only reason to go ahead and see the film in our opinions. We’re much more excited about seeing War Machine joining the Iron Man arsenal and adding a whole lot more “KABOOM!”

In case you missed it last year, Twestival is a Twitter-based event which promotes charity through donations for user’s favourite not-for-profit organisations. The event is going ahead again this year and will be taking place on September the 12th.

If you’re interested in helping promote the event or fundraising on the day, you can register from July 1st through Twitter, who are aiming to beat last year’s goal of $250,000 raised through the site. We’ll definitely be registering to show our support so keep an eye on this blog for more details as to what we’ll be doing.

The email itself from Twitter regarding the event:

February 12, 2009. It happened everywhere, from Bangalore to Paris, Buenos Aires to Cape Town, Sydney to Toronto. 202 cities with of people from different cultures, religions and languages banded together during Twestival and decided that every human being on this planet deserves safe drinking water. We came together at tweetups, we raised money, and together we funded 55 water projects. This means 17,000 people now have access to a new life with clean and disease-free water, and you can watch the impact this made here. I can’t imagine any other age in history when people from nations around the world, some of whom were supposed to be sworn enemies, could work together towards a common goal with such ease and authenticity.

We can make brilliant things happen if we put our hearts behind them. Today at the 140 Character Conference Amanda Rose, the founder of Twestival is making two official announcements. The first is Twestival Local on September 12th. The goal is “to give people the opportunity to feel they are a part of a larger social movement, but bring the cause a little closer to home”. On this day, cities will be encouraged to host events and select a registered charity to support with 100% of the proceeds. Official city registration will open on July 1st via twestival.com and you can stay tuned by following @twestival on Twitter. A guidebook and information on how you can get involved will also be available on the site from next week.

The second is the official Twestival 2010 date which is (drumroll) February 4, 2010! In the month of October, the Twestival community will be given the opportunity to decide which cause will receive the donations.

Gandhi told us that we should be the change we want to see. What change would you like to see on September 12th?

When Facebook launched their instant messaging system a while ago they knew it would be popular simply due to the masses of people who already call the site home, though it seems it was good enough that people are now ditching traditional IM programs like Windows Live Messenger, GTalk and Yahoo Chat.

Facebook’s engineers today revealed that FbChat is now serving over one billion messages per day. While that may not sound so phenomenal considering how many more the other big guns serve, though you should begin to take notice when you consider that the system is less than a year old.

So, will it ever take over from the likes of AOL Messenger? Probably not, but it’s still a massive leap for something that’s been around for such a short amount of time.

According to TechCrunch, Google is set to possibly purchase social media giant Twitter for a sum which could be in excess of $250 million. While reports are early, this news apparently comes from several credible sources which are all saying the same thing.

This comes after recent news of the attempted Facebook acquisition of the site for around half a billion, though it’s impossible to compare the two figures as Facebook’s deal included a whole swag of very overvalued stock. As Google’s bid would assumedly be cash-based, it would be worth much more on face value.

If the sale goes ahead it will be the second sale from the founders of Twitter to Google as the sale of Blogger went ahead only five years ago. Biz Stone and Evan Williams must have a mighty large smile on their faces right about now.

Whether it’s going ahead or not will only be told in the future, however it’s a good bet that someone will buy Twitter eventually. Our only question is, when will Microsoft put their bid in?

Twitter has announced a rescheduling of its maintenance downtime due to the controversy surrounding the Iranian election, in a bid to have the site up and running during the day in Teheran and pulling it down while Iran is sleeping.

Initially the downtime was conveniently going to take place at 12.45AM US ET (while there would have been a lot less traffic on the site), though it’s now been aimed to go down at 2PM Pacific.

This was taken from the Twitter blog:

“A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide—we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.”

Can’t get enough of Twitter? If you’re anything like us then you’ll know your insatiable Twitter addiction can never truly be satisfied and it seems that guys over at Mashable have created something to help us sate our cravings even more.

The Mashable Lounge is a chatroom which will allow users to sign in via their Twitter login and chat with other users, as well as to listen in to important Mashable news, interviews and other juicy social media gossip — all without revealing your Twitter password as is the case with most other services that use the oAuth.

So go and check it out! You never know, you might just see us there from time-to-time!

Think there’s no money to be made on Twitter? Think again — Dell’s outlet store on Twitter (@DellOutlet) has announced they’ve recently surpassed $2 million USD in sales, giving proof to the theory that the platform can be used to make money.

In less than two years they’ve gone from zero to 640,000+ followers and have earned over $1 million in the last year alone, throwing all doubbts out the window that Twitter could not be used as a successful marketing tool — in fact, they’ve shown everyone that  for a free marketing medium, there are serious dollars to be made.

Despite this, it’s important to note that Dell did turn over $61 billion in 2008 (yeah, that’s with a “b”), so the marketing efforts on Twitter are really a minuscule drop in their earning pool.

But how exactly did they do it? Well, the fact that they had the Dell name to pull in the followers, as well as the marketing and branding power of a multi-billion-dollar organisation surely helped, though the simple fact is that if Dell can do it in that span of time, it’s extremely feasible that someone like you can do it as well.

All you need is the right strategy to get 640,000+ followers…

If you’re familiar with our services, you’ll know that a little over a month ago we began selling packages of Twitter followers and in that short time we’ve been absolutely bombarded with people looking to increase their follower numbers in order to help their marketing efforts — who knows, perhaps even you’ve invested in some!

We’re extremely excited to announce that as of today we’ve served over 250,000 followers to our clients — yes, that’s over a quarter of a million so far — on their accounts. We can’t imagine what the total impact that’s had on their combined efforts, though it must have been a HUGE one!

To celebrate even further, we’re offering you, our valued readers and clients, an additional 10% on top of any order of 5,000 or 10,000 followers but you have to be quick! This offer will be for the NEXT THREE CLIENTS ONLY and after that, we won’t be offering any more!

That means if you order a package of 5K or 10K followers right now, you’ll end up with a further 500-1,000 followers on top of your purchase at no extra cost. And considering we’re offering 25% off these services at present, we couldn’t imagine a better deal! Want to take advantage? Then you only need to go and buy Twitter followers right here!

So, thanks for celebrating the first 250,000 followers with us — we’re looking forward to the next quarter-million and beyond!

Alright guys, we hate to nag but today is the last day of our  promotion where you can get 20% off all our packages of followers of 2,500 and above. We’d hate for you to miss out and if you do we don’t want you curling up into a ball in the corner and weeping, so if the clock runs out then don’t say we didn’t tell you so!

The only package that’s not being discounted is our 1,000 follower pack, though everything else you’ll get an automatic 20% off right now.

But how much will you save? Well it’s $29.40 off 2,500 followers, $53.40 off 5,000 followers and a whopping $99.40 off 10,000 followers. But you have to act right now to get those savings — they won’t last forever. In fact, they’re only going to last until the end of the night!

Want some? Get them by clicking here now.