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iePlexus Social Media News Brief: April 2, 2010

How large is Twitter really? Then grab your pillow, we’re telling you about an event promoted exclusively through social media. And who said the recorder and the Glockenspiel were boring instruments to play? They aren’t in today’s social media news brief…

We all know that the population of Facebook is well above 400 million now, but what about Twitter. According to WebProNews on Thursday, the social networking site has surpassed 100 million users, roughly 25 % of Facebook’s population. The news company also owns a Twitter service known as Twellow, which is more or less the yellow pages of Twitter. Matthew Daines is the lead developer for Twellow and said factoring in suspended accounts, Twitter likely has 102 million users. While this is impressive Twitter has not confirmed the reports, although the service has been generally correct in the past.

Last week, we told you about Earth Hour, a one hour campaign worldwide to help bring awareness to climate change. Well, it happened here in Seattle, you’re looking at footage from there. And about more than 4000 communities worldwide. We told you the campaign was almost exclusively promoted on social media sites like Facebook and twitter, and this weekend we have another event to tell you about that’s been promoted exclusively through social media. Saturday will mark International Pillow Fight Day, and no I’m not making this up, this is footage from previous pillow day fights on YouTube. 144 cities world wide have signed up to participate in festivities. From Boise to Berlin, from London to LA, and even from Shanghai to here in Seattle, most the cities have been promoting the event primarily through Facebook invitations only. The event here in Seattle was just established last week and started off with 12 people being invited and ask to send out invites to people they knew. The invitation has grown so much that just one week after those 12 people were invited more than 4,100 people have been invited to Seattle’s pillow. The event here in Seattle is tomorrow afternoon at 2pm at Westlake Center Plaza, if you want to find out if a pillow fight is happening in a city near you, be sure to visit pillowfightday.com.

It’s time for today’s viral video. Kurt Schneider and Jake Bruene are YouTube musicians as well as real life friends. The two however have started an online duel trying to play some of today’s hottest hits with simple instruments like the recorder and the GLOCKENSPIEL. Take a listen to each of them.