A few days ago I posted about a rumour that Apple Was Considering Buying Twitter?. I was reading more about the story today and found out that a day after I posted about it the founders of Twitter were on a morning talk show when Biz Stone (co-founder) confirmed that ‘No. We are not for sale’.

He also added that ‘Twitter is focused on developing new features on its Web site and on remaining independent’.

Although the owners of Twitter have stated that they are not selling Twitter, I don’t see these rumours going away, least not until they come up with some sort of business model to take advantage of their growth in popularity.

Link : Sorry Apple, Biz Stone says Twitter’s not for sale

Owen Thomas wrote an article on Gawker today asking ‘Could Apple Buy Twitter?‘. I’m not sure what his sources are but he claims that is the closest company to secure a deal to aquire Twitter, and for a whopping $700 million.

Not sure why Apple would be interested in purchasing Twitter. They are not a search engine company, they are not an ad company, they are a hardware company. Though if these Twitter purchase rumours are true, perhaps they are looking to branch into other areas on the net.

I’m a bit skeptical as to whether there is any truth is this news story. There’s a good chance it’s just another internet rumour which has grown arm and legs

If you have been using Twitter in the last few weeks then you will undoubtedly have come across several links to the story about Ashton Kutcher vs CNN. Along with his wife Demi Moore, Ashton was one of the first major celebrities to embrace Twitter from his account @aplusk.

When he reached 824,000 thousand people he noticed that he was 55 thousand followers behind CNN and duly posted this video :

Larry King responded in kind in true Hollywood fake-fight fashion with this video :

Ashton Kutcher asked his followers to agressively help him out on this campaign and it obviously worked because last night he reached the 1 million follower landmark.

When he was approaching the 1 million mark he streamed himself, his wife and his friends through UStream. This 30 minute video shows you the before and after reaching the milestone. He reaches it just after 18 minutes into the video

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

It’s worth noting that CNN have also reached the 1 million mark as well. With this story hitting the headlines this week and with Kuutcher going on Oprah today, I expect Twitter to see a huge amount of growth in the next 2 months.

The funny thing about this whole story is that CNN didn’t even own the Twitter account which reached the 1 million mark until last week. The official CNN Twitter account @CNN has under 70,000 followers but the one which reached the 1 million mark, @CNNBRK (short for CNN Breaking News feed), was launched by a CNN fan called James Cox.

According to Nieman Journalism Lab :

Cox, a web developer, wrote a five-line Ruby script that yanked CNN’s emails and turned them into brief messages on a Twitter account called, somewhat inelegantly, @CNNbrk. He signed up to receive those tweets via text message, and — voila! — Cox had breaking news on his cellphone. He alerted his friends on his personal Twitter account.

You can read the full interview and see a video of James talking about the whole thing at the link below

Link : How a CNN user propelled the network into Twitter’s top slot — or why CNN headlines are so short