Twitter hit  a new milestone yesterday – 20 billion tweets.

According to Mashable, the milestone comes just two months after the service hit 15 billion tweets and about five months since it reached 10 billion, indicating that activity levels on the microblogging service continue to accelerate.

So it looks like Twitter has entered some rarefied air for sure. According to ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch the micro-blogging juggernaut is moving into an exclusive club by securing a new round of funding ($50 million) based on a valuation of $1 billion (yup, it’s a b). No doubt, this will begin to stir the supporters and detractors alike.

Yup, that’s a B as in billion. Just when you think the newspaper industry can’t take another hit it gets hit with a haymaker. According to TechCrunch, the Newspaper Association of America reported a 28.28% year over year in Q1.

It looks like the biggest April Fool’s Joke was on all of us. Despite persistent rumors that Google was in talks to acquire Twitter (the coolest thing since the last coolest thing since sliced bread), no deal is forthcoming.