Talk to anyone about what little technology company has a chance at being the Next Big Thing in social media, and chances are you'll hear the name "Twitter." Everyone's twittering about Twitter, even my mom knows all about it. News of the platform's $15 million funding round has been making the rumor rounds for over a month,

Today the rumors were confirmed with news of the funding on the Twitter blog, and a new nugget: Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) is one of the funders, through his personal investment company, Bezos Expeditions. The company didn't confirm the size of the round (or so much of a whisper of the company's valuation), but said they would spend the money on the always-aching infrastructure and reliability.

As my favorite media analysis guy Marshall Kirkpatrick says, "As founders are concerned, Bezos could be called Mr. Scalability - making this an awesome partnership to tackle Twitter's biggest obstacle." It may not prove great things for Twitter's one-day IPO; Bezos certainly hasn't proven to be a brilliant generator of shareholder value -- but for today, it's proof that the great idea has a lot of legs.

Over the past few weeks, I've been at a variety of tech conferences. And there was one question that kept coming up: What do you think of Twitter?

The site, which allows for microblogging, is definitely a growing brand. It's cool technology.

But I don't really know the utility of the service. In fact, many of the people I talked to agreed.

Yet, it doesn't seem to matter much. This week, Twitter raised a cool $15 million (according to a report in GigaOm). The valuation? $80 million.

Interestingly enough, Twitter has had some issues with its performance (for example, there have been some outages). Then again, some of its users are constantly typing away on the service – which puts a lot of strain on the infrastructure.

But, I'm still skeptical. How many people have the time to microblog about minute-by-minute details of their lives? And who really cares?

Essentially, I think Twitter is addressing a niche market – not something that will ultimately become mainstream.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

This week, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) stirred things up when it announced that it purchased Jaiku, which allows for microblogging and other shared communications on mobile devices.

What's going on here?

I had a chance to interview Gary Hall, who is the president of Pringo Networks, a player in the space.

Twitter has seen lots of traction lately. But, there is competition, such as from Finland's Jaiku. The company says that it's "an activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones."

And, now Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) has just bought the company. In fact, Jaiku is a spring chicken, having been founded in February 2006 (the product launched in July 2006).

No doubt, mobile is key for Google. And, like other areas – such as videos – it's been tough for the company to develop things organically. So, why not buy its way into the space?

Unfortunately, you can't check out the Jaiku service (it's closed to new users right now). And as seen with other Google deals – such as for Jot – it's unclear when we might see it re-emerge (or appear in other Google services).

But, if I were Twitter, I would be quivering.

Also, if you want to check out other M&A deals, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Given my position as a long-time denizen of the dot-com world, with dozens of contacts in new media and venture capital and all of the numbered Webs (1.0, 2.0 and maybe even 3.0), I'm quite frequently invited to things. Some are valuable networking tools, like LinkedIn; others are fun and a bit useful for keeping track of my virtual colleagues, like Twitter. Still others, like AIM, are vital for day-to-day working life.

And then there are the sites where my so-called "friends" hang out. It seems quite ironic that many of the former colleagues and distant contacts who invite me to "keep up with what he and your other friends are doing" were never what I would categorize as "friends." Vexing rivals? Quixotic bosses? Difficult customers? Unhappy underlings? Probably more like it. While I understand that social networking sites like Facebook.com and StumbleUpon and, to a lesser extent, MySpace and del.icio.us and the rest of them, are the rage right now -- and are used by many legitimate corporate types for actual work purposes -- well, I'm highly uncomfortable with the rampant use of the word "friend."

Let's face it: even if I'm pleased because Brian in Legal delivered that contract to me quickly, he's not actually my "buddy"; nor is the receptionist you just hired ready to be asked to join your "circle of friends." Plenty of people with whom I could happily carry on pre-conference-call banter, while I'm sure they're quite lovely, just aren't friends. Flickr gives us a break and lets us designate lots of "contacts," while Twitter has recently changed its nomenclature to count those you are following, and those that follow you. This makes sense to me! This is not presumptuous or uncomfortable.

Just because my name is in your contact list, Mr. and Ms. New Media Executive, it does not mean that you are my friend.