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Of course no one will argue these days that Twitter has become a huge online phenomenon and it influences lots of things for both end users, online and offline businesses. But how huge is it outside of the US where the trendy service is heavily promoted in traditional media?

Russian internet giant Yandex has recently released the statistics (in Russian) regarding Twitter usage in Russia and Russian-language internet segment in general and it proves that while Twitter is probably not really huge, its growth rates are so impressive that we should really expect it to become an international online phenomenon as well - and soon.

First of all, Yandex is currently aware of 183 thousand Russian-language accounts on Twitter...

Today here in Russia we have finally learned the date when we should expect iPhone 3GS to become officially available in the country as one of the leading local mobile carries and one of the largest electronics retailer have announced that they are initializing the sales this week, on the 5th of March.

It is impossible to find any publisher that bothers to report this story (not really a hot one, after all) and somehow fails to mention that this latest model of the popular Apple gadget makes its appearance in Russia with a huge delay - 9 months after its debut in the US, Canada and some European countries...

Given how huge Google is and the giant's reputation in the online business world, it is no wonder that everything that Google chooses to launch as a new product never stays unnoticed and gets tons of coverage in the blogosphere and in traditional media.

The latest addition of Google Buzz is no exception, of course, as the blogosphere could not ignore Google trying to popularize the idea of lifestreaming to millions upon millions of users of Gmail, its wildly popular web-based email service...

As soon as in March we in Russia will see a localized version of eBay. The company says they hope to increase the share of Russian buyers and overall sales via this dedicated local version. In fact, eBay is making a serious push to the European market as it adds five more countries and languages to its portfolio of localized versions - so it makes a total of six new localizations with Russia.

The countries were chosen based on demand, eBay says...

Most of the time Russian news agencies are not particularly eager to cover the latest gadgets (especially those introduced on another side of the ocean). The reason is simple: these novelties are rarely something that many people in Russia are actually interested in so why bother covering them if only a handful of people will want to read about such news.

Now imagine my surprise when the first thing I saw on TV yesterday morning was Steve Jobs introducing iPad - that was a story in the Russian news that went live mere hours after the press event took place in California...

Yesterday both the blogosphere and traditional media were engaged in a discussion about the rumors published in the New York Magazine about one of the largest newspapers, New York Times, finally being close to making the decision of beginning to charge online users for their news. This is hardly actually news given that we've already heard such rumors before and we still don't get any clarity about the model to be used here - or when this model will be implemented...

Every time that something appalling happens, I can't help but gasp at the numerous ways various scammers instantly come up with to make some quick profit on such situations. Unfortunately the latest Haiti earthquake is no exception this time - and I have just received a proof of it myself in my inbox.

Of course it is totally understandable that many people around the world are now willing to help Haiti relief and many do help with their money sending donations to various charities working in the country...

Some of you may remember that late last year the blogosphere was engaged in an animated discussion over decision of Mail.ru, one of the leading online portals in Russia, to replace search technology by local Yandex with that of Google.

Yandex (which is the leading search engine in Russia with a market share much higher than that of Google) has been the search technology of choice for Mail.ru for the previous 3 years but expiration of the contract provoked new negotiations with potential search partners...

Today the news agencies, mainstream media and the blogosphere are all abuzz about Google's decision officially announced earlier today regarding the company's intention to stop censoring search results on Google.cn, the search giant's destination site in China. Back in 2006 Google was heavily criticized for their decision to agree to implement censorship on the site at all - but since it was the only way for the company to enter the giant (and growing) online market in China, the decision was that censored search was better than no search at all...