BoomTown was intrigued when Mind-Your-Own Biz Stone, one of the co-founders of Twitter, penned a blog post yesterday about the microblogging service changing its prompting question.

Now, above the little Twitter box, it reads, “What’s Happening?” and not the original tweet query, “What are you doing?”

“The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates,” wrote Stone. “Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. ‘What are you doing?’ isn’t the right question anymore…”

While the blogosphere covered this development as if it were a moment of monumental meaning, most were ignorant that the true beacon of innovative What’s-Happeningness does not reside in Silicon Valley.

Instead, it would be embodied completely by the 1970s television show, “What’s Happening!”

The sitcom was about three African-American teens living in the Watts section of Los Angeles–Raj, Rerun and Dwayne.

Here’s a video of the opening of the show, episodes of which can be found in their entirety all over the Web, and from which much Hey-Hey-Hey wisdom can be gleaned:

Also, how any of it is going to make any money. Yes, that.

As part of this journey, I will be visiting online content efforts of all kinds, shapes and sizes–from small one-man bands to large-scale projects by big studios.

And what better way to start than with Hayden Black, creator of two really interesting Web series: a behind-the-scenes spoof of a local news broadcast called “Goodnight Burbank” and “abigail’s ‘x-rated’ teen diary,” in which Black plays a very believable teen girl.

“Burbank” came online in 2006 and “abigail” just this year.

Both have garnered millions of views, without any marketing, at a low cost of a few thousand dollars per episode.

Black, 34, who was formerly in television marketing and wrote and produced for the medium, has a production company called Evil Global Corporation.

I visited him when I was in L.A. recently, where we talked about how how he puts together the show.

Obviously, the business plan is still small scale, with advertising and product placement as its best possibility for money-making, along with making online hits to offline ones.

But first, Black has to build an audience, and he is doing OK so far. “Burbank” is one of the most popular downloads on iTunes, and Black has just inked a deal to appear on Hulu.com too.

In addition, he has presence on many social-networking sites and is about to launch a widget that will allow his audience to talk to each other from any of them.

Here’s why I like about Black: He is fresh, curious and runs circles around a lot of other online episodic efforts armed with a lot more money and so-called “Hollywood experience.”

Also, he’ll try anything.

Most of all, Black also does not dismiss the old way of doing things, focusing on development and noting quite wisely, “Storytelling never goes away.”

Indeed, it does not.

Here’s my video interview with Black:

And here is a recent episode of “Burbank”:

And here is a recent episode of “abigail”: