Yesterday I received this email from one of our Dutch Twitter fans.

Biz,

This morning, dutch journalist and TV presenter Francisco van Jole (@2525) asked if the dutch twitterazi did anything for the OLPC project. I responded by suggesting we'd have a fund raising day today; every tweet with the term 'olpc' in it would count as one euro sponsorship money. Since such laptops cost about 140 euro's, @2525 said he would buy one if we'd reach 140 tweets with 'olpc' by midnight tonight.

Today, Michiel emailed to tell me they managed to purchase 21 laptops through laptop.org. Well Merry Christmas then! Good work.

The folks over at Terraminds created a Twitter search tool.

to go with our tea.

It's Frozen Pea Friday! Lots of folks are changing their Twitter photo icon so it has some peas in it to help raise awareness. There's more info at Techcrunch. You can change your Twitter photo here. Happy Friday!

Crystal and Biz upon arrival at a company field trip to Las Vegas for the MTV Video Music Awards photographed with a Twitter-issued iPhone. And we're not even engineers! Twitter is a fun place to work.

OMG this is fun: Virtual gifts over Twitter: "Tweetgift is a simple way to show a little appreciation to a friend. all you need is a twitter account. Just reply to tweetgift and use our syntax to send gifts to your friends. Every gift starts with @tweetgift, then a friend's username, and the gift with an optional message."

example: @tweetgift @biz trophy for a job well done.

Twitter is humming along now after a late night. Our team worked earnestly into the night and morning on our largest and most complex maintenance project ever. Everything went pretty much according to plan except for one thing: an incorrect switch.

The switch in question caps traffic an unacceptable level. In order to correct this, we'll need to get some hardware installed. Unfortunately, that means we're not done with our datacenter move just yet. This type of work can be frustrating but it's all towards Twitter's highest goal: reliability.

Thanks for your patience. As always, if you have questions please write to support, share them on Get Satisfaction, or leave a comment here on the blog.

Last week Twitter stopped working over T-Mobile without notice. We were confused and jumped into the conversation on Get Satisfaction with limited information. Over the weekend we were able to determine that this was purely a technical issue between T-Mobile and Ericsson, the folks who serve our SMS traffic.

T-Mobile does not have a policy against Twitter—in fact, they like us. This was a technical bug, now resolved. However, something that emerged from this confusion was very impressive. The immediate and sustained support from the Twitter community was very much appreciated. We'll keep you updated as we learn more this week.

We announced on Friday that we were going to be doing some maintenance on Twitter all day today. It turns out we were able to do most of the work without taking Twitter offline. It may have been better referred to as a "maintenance window" but we wanted to make sure you were aware just the same.

However, to make the final move to our new data center we will definitely need take Twitter offline for about four hours while we copy the database over. So, please take note of the newly scheduled down-time for Twitter: 10PM—2AM PST starting Sunday evening. Thanks!

We've been tracking a missed connection between T-Mobile and Twitter for the past few days.  If you're a T-Mobile customer using Twitter in the United States over our shortcode 40404, you may see intermittent failures (both with sending and receiving updates).  We're working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.  Thank you for your patience!

Update (12/15 3p): We're still working on this and believe it to be a technical issue happening between T-Mobile and the folks who help run our text messaging. At this time we do not believe it to be a policy issue (as has been speculated). We're hoping for a resolution soon and will let you know when we know more.

We have a big maintenance job to do this weekend. There's a note in the Twitter UI now but it bears repeating here. We're going to be taking Twitter offline this Saturday from 10am to 10pm PST for maintenance. This includes the Twitter.com web site, SMS interaction, IM interaction, and even API projects like Twitterrific. Tell your friends!

Update (12/15 3p): Our team has been working since early this morning on the maintenance. The good news is we've been able to hold off bringing down the site for a bit longer than expected (which is why twitter.com was still accessible during the day). We do anticipate bringing the service offline in a couple hours. We will update the blog with additional info on these plans.

Best Web LittleCo of 2007: Twitter: "Twitter is undoubtedly new and disruptive. In a year in which you can count on one hand the number of disruptive Web products (iPhone would be another), Twitter stands out..." Facebook wins the Best Web BigCo of 2007.

US local site adapts to Twitter format for breaking news: "US local newspaper the Nashua Telegraph has been experimenting with Twitter for its breaking news coverage."

MediaShift Idea Lab Twitter posses | PBS: "Our small group suggested having reporters at newspapers or magazines begin using the immediacy and interactivity of Twitter. A beat reporter could enlist a dozen or two dozen passionate, driven readers to serve as a kind of Twitter posse." Cool idea!

Q: Who was the Senior Wireless UI Designer that recently left Samsung Design Europe to join our team at Twitter HQ here in sunny San Francisco?
A: Ben Fullerton!

Samsung's loss is our gain. Today is Ben's first official day as Twitter Interaction Designer.

Check out Overheard.it! The most popular word to track on Twitter is "overheard" so this new project by the folks who brought you Snitter is going to be interesting to watch. Here's how it works in their own words:

Overheard.it is a fun site that pulls in all the fun things people overhear on Twitter. The site was thought of, designed and built by the fine folks at Sidebar Creative.

You can interact with Overheard.it a few different ways. If your Twitter updates are unprotected, you can start your update with the word "overheard" and it will show up on the site. Follow @overheard and you can preface your updates with OH or overheard. Finally, you can submit anonymous updates by sending a direct message to .

I'm not sure if it's accidental or some kind of Twitter Contagion when this sort of thing happens. Willo mentions soup which makes me think of the soup I just had from Whole Foods which makes buzz think about Whole Foods' beer selection.

As Biz stated a couple posts back, Twitter is growing! We're constantly looking for amazing people to join our team in San Francisco. Interested in building out Twitter's business relationships? Have experience negotiating with mobile operators, here and abroad? Check this out:

International Business Development Manager

Twitter is seeking a Business Development Manager who is focused on bringing Twitter's potential to mobile and IM operators the world over. You'll be tasked with building and maintaining strategic partner relationships and dedicated to producing results in the form of cost-reduction, localized promotion, and revenue.

Responsibilities:

• Identifying and building a pipeline of prospects
• Negotiating and closing deals (term sheets, contracts)
• Managing relationships
• Interfacing with multiple functional groups within Twitter (e.g. marketing and engineering) to successfully harvest relationships.

Requirements:

• Experience in international business development
• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and ability to develop strong working relationships
• Extensive knowledge of mobile operator business models, utility services, and consumer Internet technology
• Extensive negotiation and closing experience (including legal aspects)
• Ability to meet multiple objectives in an entrepreneurial environment with little supervision
• Prior experience working with mobile operators is a must
• Prior experience working in a startup technology company preferred
• International travel necessary
• Fluency in multiple languages is a plus
• BA or BS degree (MBA preferred)
• Located in San Francisco

See yourself (or someone you know) here? Join us!

It's interesting to watch as the Replies feature on Twitter evolves. This feature was not originally part of Twitter until people started doing it. Then we began linking the updates together and enough people started using it that requests for specific levels of control began rolling in. We received enough feedback from folks who enjoy using the @replies feature to create a new setting.
Essentially, we've added more control to the @replies setting on Twitter. Head on over to Settings > Notices if you want to tune the level of incoming @replies you receive. There's also a help article about the @reply settings if you want to learn more.

Aaron Gong has been quietly helping us get things done here at Twitter HQ as Office Manager since October. He's also chipping in with support emails and helping schedule meetings for the illustrious Mr. Dorsey. The Twitter team is growing—a belated welcome blog post to Aaron Gong!

We've just restarted the Twitter database which may have caused slowness and in some cases prevented folks from getting to the web site. The interruption is over with now but that's what it was in case you were wondering.

The Guardian asked Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet and current Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, to tell readers what the future holds. That's easy: Twitter!

Twitter has emerged to create a seamless layer of social connectivity across SMS, IM, and the web...The potential for this simple form of hybrid communication technology is strong.

Cerf believes Twitter to be one of the most exciting areas of development on the web. That's exciting to us. Read the article here: Tell me the future | Media | The Guardian.