* This Week in Twitter is streamed live every Friday at 11AM PST. Our current site is HERE but it will soon change when the "This Week in" site is launched.

This week tech pundits had a field day predicting how Facebook's mega patent of "the news feed" will effect the web and the social media sites we all use everyday. This week also saw Twitter reach a statistical milestone and close a major deal with Yahoo.

Facebook Patents "the feed"
The biggest news this week came out of left field when Facebook was granted a patent that they filed for back in 2006. The patent (covered in detail here), essentially claims ownership over what we take for granted on almost all social networks today - the news feed. What remains to be seen is just how Facebook plans to leverage this patent and enforce it. Many believe that we are set to see some ugly legal battles in the coming months surrounding this patent. Taking a backseat to this news but likely just as significant was Facebook's announcement that they were expanding the Facebook Credit system in order to bring microtransaction features into more apps.

Twitter Yahoo Deal & New Stats
This week saw a bunch of miscellaneous Twitter news. The biggest was the announcement of a deal between Twitter and Yahoo that will integrate Twitter into Yahoo's various properties. The other major news was that Twitter's long awaited advertising platform will likely launch within the coming month. The advertising news came on the heels of new Twitter statistics that revealed nearly 75,000,000 people visited Twitter worldwide in January and are tweeting at a rate of 600 tweets per second. This week also saw some big names join Twitter including the Dalai Lama and Conan O'Brien.

Quick Hits

• How to get business done at The Next Web Conference
• Manage your Twitter account with ease using Manage Twitter
• Tweetmeme launches a new "Follow me on Twitter" button
• Wagamama becomes first UK restaurant to offer ordering on your iPhone
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the blogosphere in a diagram
• XBox Project Natal coming in October
• Great Twitter usernames may soon be released
• Gmail adds address based predictive search
• Google search goes local with nearby option
• How to use social media as a business collaboration tool
• Who is more popular on Twitter - Bill Gates or the Dalai Lama?
• Twones launched a Music Bar to discover, bookmark and share music
• Android app Recognizr uses face recognition to gather social networking activity
• Music streaming service We7 makes it to the iPhone
• Former Google employee launches instant messenger Imo.im
• Hollywood appeals loss in landmark ISP piracy case
• Flavor.me publicly launches an aggregator built around simplicity
• Read it Later bookmarking services launches a new digest feature
• A complete guide to everything you need to know about Smartphones
• Opera 10.5 for the Mac was released
• Five ways Bing is Better than Google
• Pentagon gives troops permission to Tweet
• Digg becomes profitable
• How to check your popularity online
• Newsweek in 1995: Why the Internet will Fail
• How to make Foursquare REALLY interesting...
• How to get past the Oprah barrier on Twitter
• iTunes reaches 10 billion song downloads
• Will Google Buzz and Facebook threaten Twitter?

This week Microsoft unveiled its long awaited mobile operating system called "Windows Phone 7 Series". The mobile landscape also changed this week as Google Android picked up AIR and Flash support. However, Steve Jobs remains adamant about not supporting Flash on the iPhone as well as the upcoming iPad. Also this week came a silly but important site that serves as a reminder about the risks of using geolocation services.

Microsoft Unveils the Windows Phone
On Monday, Microsoft announced their new and improved mobile operating system dubbed "Windows Phone 7 Series". Beyond what many believe to be a poor name choice, the features look quite impressive. While Microsoft does have some catching up to do, initial reactions have been positive. Perhaps one of the biggest questions people have regarding the OS is its ability to multitask. Although details on this as well as others are uncertain, more info will be released in the coming weeks. Phones with Windows 7 Phone Series are slated to be released by Christmas.

Battle Over Flash
This week Adobe announced that the new version of Flash Player (version 10.1) as well as AIR will be supported by Google's Android OS. This news is sure to anger many iPhone users who often cite no Flash support as their top complaint. In spite of this, Steve Jobs is not backing down on his stance against Flash. He recently had some harsh words for what he called a "dying technology". It will be quite interesting to see how the future of Flash plays out. While Google supports it on Android, they are also the biggest proponents of HTML5 (its potential killer). Meanwhile, mobile heavyweight Apple doesn't support Flash on its iPhone as well as the upcoming iPad. As long as Apple continues to lead the way in the mobile space, their position on Flash will likely carry the biggest weight in the marketplace.

The Risks of Social Media Location Sharing
This week a site called Please Rob Me was released that attempted to warn people about the risks of using geolocation based services such as Foursquare. The site shows people who are checking in on location-based services (and are thus not home). While the site is a little silly it does bring up valuable attention to the issue of privacy and safety when using geolocation services. This concern will certainly increase when Facebook introduces geolocation check-ins to it's 400 million plus users. Not only that, but Facebook users often have their physical address in their profile. All in all, a good reminder to be aware of the risks of geolocation.

Quick Hits

• Microsoft and Yahoo search partnership gets US and EU approval
• Grubar pulling in upwards of $235,000/year with Daring Fireball?
• Open Angel Forum showing the middle finger to 'Pay-to-Pitch'
• Google now 2nd most valuable brand in the world
• Sex.com for sale, bids starting at $1million
• Google launches CloudBoard, a clipboard Google Docs
• Proposable, a web app aiming to transform sales proposals
• Google gets approval to trade energy
• Qrobe, a new type of metasearch engine
• Last.fm now charts history of your music taste over time
• Geeks Beyond Firewalls: a day in a life of a Syrian techie
• Facebook becomes 2nd most popular site in US
• Social media analytics company uberVU adds new sentiment data
• 5 social media marketing initiates that should be on your to-do list
• Google acquires email startup reMail
• Google To Use Location-Based Content Filter Patent?
• Bored of Buzz? Try it on your phone - and also on a map without a phone
• Listia, the anti-eBay, aims to give your stuff away
• Should Google Buzz have begun in Labs?
• Facebook users spend 7 hours monthly on the site
• First Facebook Lite, now Facebook Zero

This week saw a couple of big deals involving Monster and Yahoo as well as UStream. It also saw the battle over mobile heat up. Android's platform is gaining features and more phones. The big question mark in the space, Microsoft, appears to be poised to release a mobile phone soon. This week also saw Facebook turn 6 and get an improved UI. Meanwhile, Twitter added a key new feature to their web interface.

Battle Over Mobile
New stats reveal that world Smartphone shipments are up 39% year over year. For Apple, who released the latest version of their iPhone OS this week, iPhone sales account for an estimated 54% of their total stock price compared to only 21% for Mac sales. Google's Android platform is gaining steady adoption and this week pushed out an update on the Nexus One that brought long awaited multi-touch to the device. Samsung also released an Android 2.1 device. Meanwhile, everyone is still waiting to see how Microsoft plans to play in this market. The Zune Phone is rumored to arrive this Month.

Facebook Turns 6, Gets a Facelift
On Thursday Facebook celebrated is 6 year birthday and also announced that it had reached 400 million users. In this interview this week, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg revealed that a whopping 175 million people log onto Facebook every single day. This week also began the rollout of the new UI that is being gradually released to users as well as a handy new image uploader. Meanwhile, a rumored email product called "Project Titan" appears to be in the works.

Twitter Features, Attack and Stats
This week Twitter introduced "hovercards", a quick way to see a user's info without having to visit their profile. Many users were also required to change their password due to a phishing attack. Users who used the same login info for a torrent site had found their accounts compromised. Meanwhile, a study by Pew Internet found that while 73% of teenagers were "avid" on social networks only 8% use Twitter. While perhaps this is cause for concern, this visualization of Twitter's amazing growth is anything but.

Quick Hits

• Monster bought Yahoo's HotJobs for $225 million in cash.
• A review of SeeSaw, the UK's Hulu
• Why You Should Be Afraid of Internet censorship in Australia, even If you don’t live there.
• YouTube's movie rental service is off to a slow start.
• URL shortening service Bit.ly launched a new self-service custom URL option for free.
• FriendFeed like service Nsyght, has added some key new features.
• Online streaming service UStream secured $20 million in investment this week.
• Apple has stopped production on its troubled 27" iMac until it figures out the problems.
• Engadget, in order to combat trolls, has turned off comments on their site.
• Martin reveals how favorite tweets can reveal self-obsessed celebrities.
• Kevin Rose's We Follow Twitter directory had a glitch that replaced users' profile link with a We Follow profile link. The issue has since been resolved.
• Reports this week show the FBI's desire to know everything that you do online.
• Movie Pirates vs Movie Industry, Matt explores the industries' claims vs the reality.
• Alex covers some great sites in his Pirate's Guide to paying for music.

This Week in Twitter will include a feature interview, some fun games as well as the latest Twitter news. I will be joining Lon on the show to cover the weekly Twitter news. Co-hosting the show is "social media ninja" Natasha Wescoat. Our first guest was the high profile travel Twitter user @adventuregirl (AKA Stefanie Michaels).

* Watch the episode here. 

This week's news was dominated by Apple's iPad announcement this past Wednesday. Steve Job's unveiling of the iPad was well received by some and left others disappointed. Below I recap the speculation at the beginning of the week, a run down of the specs that were announced on Wednesday as well as the reactions to all the news.

The Anticipation
Monday brought us the last couple days to speculate about what the Apple tablet, or whatever it was to be called, was going to look like and the features it was going to have. It was our last chance to dig up internal memos, speculate about possible designs such as this and this, and discuss the profound implications of the unreleased device. The excitement reached astronomical levels the day before the announcement when Job's had some very positive comments to say about how Apple's upcoming products would positively effect Apple's bottom line in 2010. The one solid piece of information that did come out before the announcement was due to a slip up by McGraw-Hill’s CEO who confirmed the device would run iPhone applications. All of this pre-announcement hype caused us to take a look back at how Apple rumors start and how to manufacture them.

The Big Day
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010...the day that many had been waiting years for was finally here. The excitement reminded me of the original iPhone announcement. Live bloggers from around the world were ready to see what Job's was about to reveal. What Job's revealed was the iPad, a 9.7″ touch screen tablet device. Check out Martin's great summary of specs, models, apps available, pricing and availability. Also make sure to watch the official iPad Keynote video as well as Apple's iPad promotional video.

The Aftermath
For some, like our man Alex, the iPad was a big "iLetdown". In his reaction he goes through his laundry list of iPad complaints including pricing, storage capabilities and lack of multitasking among many others. While I agree with many of Alex's complaints, the iPad does remind me of the original iPhone which was too expensive to become a mass market device and also lacked many standard features when it was launched (such as copy and paste). The one big thing that I do agree with Alex on as being a complete fail is the lack of Flash support. For a device clearly positioned for consumption, the lack of Flash support and inability to watch things such as Hulu is somewhat confusing to me and many others. Sure, the promise of HTML5 will make this a non-issue eventually but that doesn't solve our problems when the iPad is released in March.

Quick Hits

• Tweetdeck launched a job centric version of their popular Twitter/Facebook Adobe Air client.
• Google maps goes inside and provides their "Street View" 360 degree views for the San Diego Zoo.
• Twitter's Chirp conference dates are officially set for April 14th and 15th in San Francisco.
• Technology blog TechCrunch was a victim of a major hacking effort on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday this week.
• A great infographic comparing traffic from MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.
• Google announced it was phasing out support for IE6, do they have the power to finally kill it off?
• Electronic car company Tesla formally filed paperwork to go public. Paperwork indicates a $100 million IPO.
• Recent rumors indicate that Amazon is considering purchasing Netflix.
• China denies hacking Google and calls the US hypocrites among other harsh comments.
• iPhone users are likely to happy after hearing that the iPhone is likely to be on all major US carriers within 18 months.
• A new report by RJMetrics indicates that Twitter, for its billion plus valuation, only has 10-15 million active users.
• Google Voice now works on the iPhone using a newly release web application.

This week saw a bunch of Twitter news including the launch of a new Suggested User List as well as local based trends. They also announced an upcoming feature to claim dormant usernames. All wasn't good for Twitter as disappointing December growth rates were released. Also in the news was Apple after the long awaited Tablet announcement was officially scheduled for this coming Wednesday the 27th. The Google China drama also continued this week as the US Government stepped in.

The Next Web Podcast: Episode 7
Check out this week's podcast where we discuss Twitter's new Suggested User List as well as their plans to release dormant usernames, rumors that Bing could be replacing Google as the default search provider on the iPhone, a spoof political site that has become one of the biggest political sites in the world, some more ranting about FarmVille and much more.  

Apple's Event on January 27th
After months and months of rumors and speculation, everyone will finally get to see what Apple's tablet is all about. This Wednesday Apple is holding a press event in San Francisco. Although the release date of the tablet is uncertain, it will be nice to finally see what the product is about and stop the perpetual cycle of rumors about the design or the possible data connectivity the device will have. Also expected to be discussed at the event is iPhone 4.0, which is expected to have the ability to run apps in the background as well as system-wide multi-touch.

Twitter News
This week Twitter had a couple of significant announcements. The biggest was the launch of a new and "improved" Suggested User List that now splits up suggested users into categories. The list has had criticism since it was launched and this will likely not silent those complaints about it being somewhat elitist and unfair. Twitter also launched and announced two other features. They launched geo-specific trends (why it matters) and announced an upcoming feature to claim dormant usernames (also check out TwitterCounter's new username claiming feature released this week). In other Twitter news, we had the first tweet from space (yawn) as well as the world's richest man, Bill Gates, join Twitter (and start a blog). While all great news, Twitter's growth rate figures for December weren't as positive.

Google vs. China
Last week was filled with reports about Google's potential exit from China following an alleged attack by the Chinese government to seize emails from human rights activists within China. This week the drama continued as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called out to China urging them to investigate the attacks and also denouncing Chinese Internet censorship. China was quick to respond to Clinton letting her know that her comments could harm Chinese - US relations. President Obama was quick to support Clinton's remarks and call out China for their censorship. How this situation plays out is yet to be seen but for now Google is staying in China.

Quick Hits

• Bing To Replace Google On The iPhone? The latest rumors indicate the possibility.
• South Korea tops the world in Internet Connection Speed - US a measly 18th.
• Music discovery site TheSixtyOne launched a major redesign. Turns itself into one of the slickest music web services out there.
• YouTube struck a deal this week to live broadcast Cricket's India Premier League. The big move towards live streaming sports online.
• Ancestry.com launched a new iPhone app this week. Personally, my genealogy site of choice is Geni.
• SeatGeek is a pretty nifty site that predicts the future price of tickets.
• Moluko is a service that provides an E-Commerce solution for Facebook fan pages. It's not the first to do this but it does look promising.
• If you're looking for a simple collaboration tool check out tgethr, a tool we covered this week.
• ICQ Launches ICQ 7 - Introduces social messaging across networks.
• Alex continues his ranting regarding FarmVille.
• Momento offers a unique approach to recording your life with it's mobile diary application.
• A great discussion on social media marketing strategy and its place in business.
• The White House goes mobile with an iPhone App and Obama live stream.
• Seesmic launches Seemsic Look, a unique way to consume real time info using Windows 7.
• An SEC filing this week revealed that Google co-founders Brin and Page have sold off a significant amount of their shares.
• Google's Nexus One voice recognition censors curse words. Really!?
• Facebook announced a Games and Application Dashboard to make it easier for users to interact with their apps.
• Music labels appear to be sick of ad-supported streaming - news coming from the MIDEM, Europe’s largest music industry conference. It was also noted this week music execs are pleased with Spotify and are "paying labels well".
• Will the Nexus One spawn a new advertising world order? Lara discusses how the Nexus One will change the way Google’s advertising tools will affect other mobile vendors.

This week saw the release of Google's Nexus One Phone as well as a bunch of tech announcements at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. We also announced the dates this week of The Next Web Conference 2010 happening in Amsterdam.

Announcing The Next Web Conference 2010 This week we announced the dates for The Next Web Conference (fifth edition) which is be held the April 27-29 2010 in Amsterdam. Last year we welcomed 900+ guests from over 25 countries and 25 Startups launched their company on the main stage. We look forward this year being bigger than ever. You can snag your tickets here.

The Next Web Weekly Podcast
This week we brought on a fiber-optics specialist to get a little geeky and also argued on what is going to be the dominant mobile platform in the coming years. We also discuss Avatar, Microsoft's Project Natal as well as a mix of other stuff. Check it out!

Google's Nexus One Released
The highly anticipated Google phone was unveiled this week and is available for purchase now directly from Google. The unlocked version is $529 and the subsidized contract version with T-Mobile (if you're in the USA) is $179. In coming months it will be available with Vodafone (for Europe) and Verizon plans too. Check out the full Nexus One specifications cheat sheet as well as a comparison of the Nexus One to the other major smartphones on the market.

CES and the Crunchies
Two big industry events occurred this week including the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as well the Crunchies in San Francisco. The Crunchies saw Facebook lead the way in the awards and CES saw a bunch of new product announcements. Check out CNET for a summary of all the announcements a highlights from CES. We covered a couple of the big announcements including Skype's plans to be built into to TVs as well as Pandora's partnering with Pioneer to bring their popular music streaming service to cars.

Quick Hits

• The latest rumors point to a March release date for Apple's tablet.
• While Twitter gets all the criticism for being down, new data this week shows it actually has more uptime that Facebook.
• Location based social network Foursquare now lets you check in anywhere in the world.
• A couple big acquisitions this week including Seesmic acquiring Ping.fm and movie review site Flixster buying competitor Rotten Tomatoes.
• Apple could be getting a little nicer to devs in terms of the iPhone app approval process. A recent experience by Ralph indicates this.
• Jason Calacanis reveals his top tech products of 2009 and Boris takes a look forward at the state of technology in 2010.
• Twitalyzer, a tool for analyzing Twitter stats, released Version 2 of their popular application.
• Facebook launched a new version of their iPhone app that finally is able to provide push notifications.
• A great article by Anil Dash on how no one "really" has a million followers on Twitter.
• Boxee beta goes live to the public.
• Apple moves towards a web based iTunes by introducing streaming music previews without iTunes.
• The Web 2.0 suicide machine that deletes your Facebook profile among others was banned this week by Facebook.
• Android users were happy this week as Evernote launched a new version of their mobile application.
• Tweetdeck's iPhone app was updated and now includes some new map integration. In other Tweetdeck news, Sky News now orders all journalists to install the application on their computer.
• France is considering taxing Google, MSN, Yahoo for online advertising revenue.
• Google launching “Pay per Call” mobile ads for phone numbers that are clicked in ads.
• A collection of all the best viral videos of 2009.