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?”

While the blogosphere covered this 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.

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Guess what? It’s yet another online company going gaga over Twitter integration–this time LinkedIn is announcing a partnership with the microblogging service.

Microsoft and Google recently announced various ways they were lacing their various services with Twitter’s feed, mostly around search.

Here is an adorkable video about it with LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Twitter’s Biz Stone.

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In a stunning one-two punch, Microsoft will announce separate nonexclusive deals today with both Facebook and Twitter to integrate their real-time feeds of status updates into the Bing search service.

According to sources, Microsoft digital head Qi Lu will announce the deal onstage in a few hours at the Web 2.0 Summit.

BoomTown reported earlier today that the Microsoft data-mining deal with Twitter was poised to be announced.

The first-mover deal by Microsoft, needless to say, is a solid blow to Google, which has also been talking with both companies about a similar arrangement, because–for the first time–data will be available on Bing that are not available on the search giant.

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According to sources, Microsoft is close to striking a nonexclusive data-mining deal with Twitter to integrate the microblogging service’s full feed into the results of its Bing search service.

News of the deal, which was still being worked on by engineers and execs at both the software giant and the start-up as late as yesterday, could even come as early as today at the Web 2.0 Summit conference in San Francisco.

But sources close to the situation caution that the deal could still run into a snag and was not yet complete, although it seems more likely than not that a deal will soon be struck with Microsoft first and then Google, which is the other company Twitter has also been talking to.

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Is there gold in them thar tweets?

Maybe so, because–according to sources familiar with the situation–Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines.

Sources said a number of scenarios are being discussed to compensate Twitter for its huge and potentially valuable trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from the data stream of billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.

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In a week, the entire advertising sales staff of MySpace will gather at a swanky new seaside resort about 20 miles south of Los Angeles to get a first glimpse of the fresh direction the company is preparing to take under its new management.

The beleaguered social networking site has been in the midst of an effort to reinvigorate its image, spur innovation in its product and–most of all–pull itself out of a too-long slump, even as longtime rival Facebook has seen explosive growth.

On the possible agenda: A new strategy aimed at music and entertainment; a new look; and, perhaps, a new boss for the ad sales team.

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Considering the ongoing skirmishes going on right now between Amazon and Google over digital book publishing, it’s more than ironic that Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos was one of only a few initial investors in the search giant.

But–in one of the many interesting details in New Yorker author Ken Auletta’s new book, “Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It”–it was indeed Bezos who invested $250,000 in the start-up in 1998 at four cents a share.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

There’s a great excerpt in the New Yorker this week.

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Earlier today, BoomTown wrote a tongue-in-cheek post to depict what I thought of the $1 billion valuation that Twitter recently got from investors.

It was meant all in fun, as poking holes in the frothy atmosphere around the microblogging hottie is kind of an easy layup.

But someone on Twitter called my use of an image of the Kool-Aid pitcher man as “harsh,” and I got several other emails from those who think bubble-investing is dandy!

So, in the interest of fairness, here are some other visual choices for a metaphorical depiction of the amazing valuation.

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Well, it’s not like Twitter’s investors are Britney Spears or anything, but somehow, the $1 billion valuation of Twitter deserves a BoomTown all-lenses-shooting response.

Thus, the crack team at All Things Digital went all out in trying to capture one such investor in his true state.

Click in to see photographic proof!

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Since it debuted last week, a spoof video for Twitteleh is rising fast, with close to 200,000 views on YouTube.

It’s one of the many parodies of the popular microblogging service, Twitter, which attracts them the way it attracts valuation-mad VCs.

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Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse–famous for his controversial “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which correctly chided the Internet giant for becoming so lugubrious several years ago–is taking a job at AOL very similar to the one he left at Yahoo last year.

Garlinghouse, who will remain on the West Coast, will be named president of Internet and mobile communications at AOL, putting him in charge of the New York-based Time Warner online unit’s powerful email and instant-messaging properties, including ICQ and AIM.

He will also be, said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, its “CEO of Silicon Valley for us.”

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone can be seen tomorrow night in an interview with Tavis Smiley on his PBS show, talking about the denial-of-service attacks on the hot microblogging service recently.

In the interview, noting that Twitter had spent 2008 scaling up its platform to deal with its exploding popularity, Stone said the San Francisco-based start-up was now trying to get up to speed on malicious attackers.

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Twitter seems to be like one of those toy Bozo Bop Bags for cyber-attackers, as it temporarily went down again today.

In a post on its status site titled “Responding to site downtime,” Twitter wrote:

“We’re working to recover from a site outage and will update as we learn more.”

Twitter is now back up, noting that it is “analyzing the traffic data to determine the nature of this attack.”

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Facebook said today it is acquiring FriendFeed, the online content sharing site.

It is a logical fit for the social networking site, which has lagged behind microblogging kingpin, Twitter, in the real-time search and status game of perception in Silicon Valley. FriendFeed has also trailed well behind Twitter.

Terms were not disclosed, but it is likely be well under the $500 million Facebook once offered Twitter. In fact, sources estimate to me that the price was about $50 million in cash and stock.

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This morning, in a blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone gave more of an explanation for the outage that the microblogging service endured due to a denial-of-service attack.

Fortunately, BoomTown can read between the lines in order to decipher the secret message herein!

Biz wrote: The Adventure Continues.

Translation: By “adventure,” I mean yet-another-friggin’-Twitter-birdie-crisis.

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