Welcome to the first of our regular weekly round-ups of things we’ve spotted this week of interest to us and what we do here.

Happy Birthday.

Happy Birthday Twitter. The micro-blogging platform turned 5 this week. Going from 1 to 200million users in that time and a valuation in the region of $10 Billion (bubble anyone). Whilst 5 years can seem like 50years in technology terms, in the history of Twitter I can’t help thinking we’re still at the start – as Brian Solis says

“What’s far more eminent however is not everything Twitter’s attained to date, its promise and legacy lies in all that it has yet to fulfill. Not only will it continue to change how we discover and interact, Twitter will continue to shape culture, the nature of relationships, and also further democratize business and media to revolve around the EGOsystem.”

To commensurate the anniversary Twitter has released its ownvideo – with testimonials from the likes of Richard Branson, Snoop Dogg and Piers Morgan. Surprising considering it has over 200million users, the video has only had 300,00 views so far.

Now that’s how to do it.

Us PR types have been talking for a while now about how all companies are (or can be) now media companies. Google UK has gone ahead and proved that fact in an elegant and sophisticated fashion with the launch of Think Quarterly. A beautiful piece of publishing – with well written editorial, great layout and presentation.

I recommend everyone takes a look.

National Net Ventures adds to portfolio

N2V invested in Qaym.com this week – adding the Arabic restaurant rating portal to its ever expanding portfolio of Arabic web companies.

For those that don’t know N2V is an internet holding company in the UAE with a core business of creating innovative web and mobile web ventures for the region.

When East meets West

I loved this. PSFK reported on the Mumbai Skateboard – in what it called a cultural mash-up.

Tobias Megerle, a German-born artist living in Mumbai – commissioned a local wood carving shop to produce a number of these traditional carving style skateboards.

And finally – What’s been Trending this week:

Rebecca Black

I couldn’t not mention the Rebecca Black video – I know you would have all seen it by now, but still – it has to be shared. Quite possibly the “worst” song of all time (Barbie girl was a good song) and a correspondingly awful music video to accompany. It’s been an internet hit this past month, and this past week has seen the views explode. The 13 year old singer now has had over 39million views and her song is charting in the US.

With any strong meme on the internet, one piece of content is all the community needs and the community has had a field day with this song/video, with parodies/covers and remixes popping up each day.

Charlie Sheen

And finally, another great example of the community taking content and running with it, is the Songify This homage for Charlie Sheen – Winning. Using commentary from the actors recent interviews with ABC/CNN – the immortal lines “I’m not bi-polar I’m bi-winning” and “I have tigers blood bro” the outfit has put together an amusing, if not catchy, song. 15 million views already.