The launch of the social news site Digg in 2004 was the perfect example of a good idea at the right time. That was the year the term “Web 2.0″ started being thrown about to describe the rise of new web technologies that allowed for more interactive sites, and an increased focus on user collaboration. Back then, the notion of a news site that was driven almost entirely by users was completely new and innovative, and Digg quickly rose in popularity. It sparked the rise of many similar social news sites, and was also the beginning of founder Kevin Rose’s move from television personality to web entrepreneur.

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There’s been talk about Twitter being the “pulse of the web”, and there is no doubt that the real-time web and real-time search are burning hot trends. At the heart of Twitter are its status messages, more commonly known as tweets, where people express opinions, share links and let people know what they are doing. Tweets are like the vital red blood cells in Twitter’s stream of information.

So how many tweets are pulsing through Twitter every day? When do we tweet the most? Read on to find out.

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Last week we learned that Microsoft had scored a deal with Twitter and Facebook to allow status updates to be searchable from Bing. Shortly after, Google announced a deal with Twitter as well.

These partnerships are a sign of the growing importance of the real-time web – that smorgasbord of sites and services which allows you to broadcast whatever is going on in your life right now. Other examples include the social network Foursquare, which lets you inform your friends when you’re at a particular venue, and a variety of sites that let you instantly upload audio and video from your phone.

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