More than 15 weeks after the Nexus One launched in the US, it looks like our friends in the UK may finally get an opportunity to buy the Android smartphone.  Late yesterday, a "coming soon" page set up by Vodafone briefly changed to describe the release window as April.

Credit goes to EuroDroid’s Gary Cutlack for catching the change, and assuming the update wasn’t incorrect, it pretty much guarantees that Nexus One sales will begin sometime in the next week (since April of 2011 is an unlikely release date for a cutting-edge device).

Offering the Nexus One to consumers in the UK would be a big step for Google, too, since it hasn’t yet tested its online-only sales model anywhere outside the US.

It might be wise not to expect a whole lot to occur as a result of this development, though, considering how Nexus One sales have disappointed analysts so far.  Also, Google admitted Wednesday that it was more or less giving up on improving the Nexus One’s 3G performance, and that won’t help move the product.

We’ll see what happens.  At least it won’t take too long to see how the situation turns out.

Google may end its search operations in China very soon, according to a new report.  A local employee supposedly told a Chinese newspaper that Google will announce its plans to leave on Monday, March 22nd, and then actually pull out on Saturday, April 10th.

It’s hard to judge the accuracy of this information.  On the one hand, there have been no shortages of rumors and hoaxes surrounding the situation in China.  Also, Saturday seems like a rather odd day for any company to execute a major business maneuver.

At the same time, the tension between Google and the Chinese government has been mounting for months, and there have been multiple signs that the two sides are just about done talking.

So we’ll just present what little fresh info is available.  A Bloomberg article stated this morning, "Google Inc. may pull out of China on April 10, China Business News reported today, citing an unidentified Chinese sales agent for the company."  Furthermore, "The search engine may announce its exit on March 22 . . . .  It may also reveal plans for its China workforce on the same day, according to the report. "

We’ll see what happens.  At least the Monday target date won’t keep everyone on edge for too long.

Are you involved in a non-profit in the Bay Area that could use a spruced up website? Given that a lot of these organizations are run by volunteers and have to be very careful about how they spent their money, it doesn’t come as a surprise that web design isn’t always a priority for a lot of non-profits. Web design firm ZURB, which has done design work for companies like Facebook, Yahoo, eBay and the New York Stock Exchange, is giving away a full redesign (or a completely new design) to a deserving Bay Area non-profit.

Sponsor

How To Apply

While ZURB is announcing this competition today, submissions won’t officially open until March 4th – though the company told us that they would be more than happy to look at early submissions, too. Non-profits will be able to submit their proposals until March 18th and the actual redesign will happen during a 24-hour design marathon on April 8th. The only requirement for applying is that the non-profit has enough passionate volunteers and employees who are willing to help out on April 8th.

If you want to submit a proposal, here is what you need to do:

Email wired@zurb.com with the following info:

• The project you need design help with
• Details about the team that’s going to be at ZURB’s office for 24 hours on April 8th
• Why your organization is a fit for ZURBwired

Previous winners include the Pie Ranch and Second Harvest Food Bank.

The company is also looking for additional volunteers to help out during the 24-hour marathon session. You can find additional videos from last year’s event here.

Discuss

Last month, there was a lot of hubbub about Twitter’s growth flat lining. Matthew Daines, the lead developer of our own Twitter app, Twellow, showed me a graph that he put together from the user IDs he found in the Twitter API, based on when they registered with Twitter.

What Matthew found was that there was a significantly larger number of new registrations in April – the month Oprah joined, which caused a well-publicized surge in new Twitter users. So naturally, the next month didn’t see as many new users flocking to Twitter, but it was still i decent increase from the month before Oprah joined.

Daines has now shared a new graph with me, which seems to suggest Twitter is still growing just fine. June shows that new registrations are right at what they were in April, when Oprah joined, which means that there are quite a few new people.

We should be able to get a really good idea of Twitter’s growth when we can take a look at July’s numbers in a month. At that point, we can see which direction the trend goes. I think we’re going to see growth though. Take a look at this other graph Daines shared with me, which shows the number of tweets. It looks like there is a lot more tweeting going on.

"Looks like the total tweets chart shows that the claim last month that Twitter traffic had come to a stop was not quite accurate," says Daines. "The total tweet numbers are not exact, but should be within a few hundred thousand."

So, do you think we will consider to see significant Twitter growth as the year goes on? Or do you believe Twitter as already peaked? Share your thoughts.

Earlier today, we looked at some numbers that didn’t exactly look great for Twitter. While the numbers certainly shouldn’t be ignored, nobody ever said they were concrete or indisputable fact.

The fact is, that numbers supplied from research firms are often off a bit, and they should usually be taken with a grain of salt. The indication however, was that Twitter growth had pretty much screeched to a halt. That really might not be the whole picture though.

You know how Oprah gave Twitter a huge boost? It’s possible that she might also be one reason that Twitter at first glance has appeared to level out as seen in this Compete graph:

Matthew Daines, the lead developer of our own Twitter app, Twellow, showed me another graph that he put together from the user IDs he found in the Twitter API, based on when they registered with Twitter.

As you can see from this graph, total registrations have continued to increase, though they have gone down slightly in a month’s time. If you look closer, you’ll notice that May’s number is still higher than March’s, although it’s down from April. You know why April was so high though? You guessed it. OPRAH!

"When you take into account Oprah followers coming online in April, registration numbers show the growth hasn’t stopped, just that April was an abnormal month due to Oprah fans," Daines points out. "Growth has slowed, but not stopped…these are actual numbers from the Twitter API."

As I tried to convey in the previous article, I think the "end times for Twitter" talk is a bit exaggerated. Although there are still a lot of valid points made about retention and how many people are actually using Twitter actively.

In addition, "This doesn’t take into account any suspended or defunct accounts, but overall I think it gives a good picture of new users coming online with Twitter," Daines notes.

A WebProNews reader left a comment on the previous article suggesting that the number of followers or those who are only following a small number probably accounts for a lot of people who are just using Twitter to communicate with friends and family. Perhaps it is a bit hasty to throw them into the borderline non-users category.

More than 17 million people in Turkey accessed the Internet from a home or work location in April, viewing an average of 3,044 pages per visitor, according to comScore.

Of the 17 European countries individually reported by comScore, Germany’s online audience was the largest with 40 million visitors in April, followed by the U.K. (36.8 million visitors), and France (36.3 million visitors).

The Internet audience in Turkey was the seventh largest with 17.8 million visitors, making it the second largest country in Eastern Europe behind Russia (31.3 million visitors). Internet users in Turkey were also the most engaged in Europe, spending an average of 32 hours online.

"The online population of Turkey far surpasses the rest of Europe in terms of time spent and content consumed per person," said Mike Read, SVP and managing director, comScore Europe.

"Much of this heavy engagement is driven by usage of social networking and entertainment media sites, which maintain users’ attention for extended periods of time. There are certainly excellent digital marketing and advertising opportunities in reaching these 17 million Internet users who are so engaged with the medium."

Google sites ranked as the most popular in Turkey with more than 16 million visitors in April, a reach of 90 percent of the total online population. Microsoft sites ranked second with 15.5 million, followed by Facebook (12.8 million visitors) and DOL (10.1 million visitors), owner of Turkish-based entertainment and sports sites Ekolay and Fanatik.