Oklahoma native and rebellious speller Tonia Mullins, in a spectacular act of self-incrimination, used text messages to contact a hit man to "take care" of her lover's wife. Mullins conspired with her beau, Army soldier Michael Andrew Crawford, to have the poor Mrs. Crawford killed and her insurance money used to buy Mullins and her beau a nice house. Thankfully, Mullins was far too stupid to actually hurt anybody, and the text messages are absolutely priceless.

The texts are written in a hybrid of English, texting shorthand, and whatever English-like language they speak in Oklahoma, so I can't 100% translate all of them. I can say that they are way less subtle than you'd expect from somebody trying to hire an assassin. This exchange I particularly don't understand:

Co-conspirator Robin Berry: "Well maybe I can het friend n trade something he owes me big favors anyway"
Tonia Mullins: "If I can do ne thang let me know. Robin I swear I will give the $ when it comes n ... that is n no way a problem ... as long as accident I."

Mullins had asked her friend, Robin Berry, to help her contact a hit man, and the two got no further than discussing price between themselves before the police were tipped off and the whole silly enterprise ended. An undercover agent with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation arrested Mullins and her co-conspirators easily, and the deliciously inept plotters plead guilty earlier this month.

Read the story here.

Here is a break down of some random facts I researched about different social media outlets. Some pretty interesting numbers.

Twitter

• The top followed Twitter user is Barak Obama with 119,662 followers.
  
• CNN Breaking News is the 4th most followed account on Twitter with 51,463 followers.
  
• 40% of Twitter traffic is in the United States
  
• 60% of Twitter traffic is Internationally
  
• 23.4% of Twitter traffic is from Japan
  
• 6.6% of Twitter traffic is from Spain
  
• 6% of Twitter traffic is from the UK
  
• 4.2% of Twitter traffic is from Brazil
  
• 4.2% of Twitter traffic is from Canada
  
• 3.6% of Twitter traffic is from France
  
• 3.6% of Twitter traffic is from Germany
  
• 3% of Twitter traffic is from Italy
  
• 3% of Twitter traffic is from The Netherlands
  
• 1.8% of Twitter traffic is from Taiwan
  
• As of October 2008, Twitter claims to have over 3,200,000 accounts registered
  
• Twitter was started in July 13, 2006
  
• In 2007, Twitter experienced approximately 98% uptime, or about 3 full days of downtime
  

Facebook

• Facebook currently has more than 120 million active users worldwide (users who have returned to the site in the last 30 days)
  
• Facebook is the 4th most-trafficked website in the world
  
• Facebook is the most-trafficked social media site in the world
  
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
  
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
  
• Maintain 85 percent market share of 4-year U.S. universities
  
• Number 1 photo sharing application on the Web
  
• More than 10 billion photos uploaded to the site
  
• More than 30 million photos uploaded daily
  
• More than 6 million active user groups on the site
  
• More than 400,000 developers and entrepreneurs
  
• Over 24,000 applications have been built on Facebook Platform
  
• 140 new applications added per day
  
• More than 95% of Facebook members have used at least one application built on Facebook Platform
  
• Facebook has over 600 employees
  
• The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000
  
• According to Facebook, it has received more than $40 million in funding since it launched in 2004
  

Myspace

• MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users around the globe
  
• 85% of MySpace users are 18 or older
  
• 1 in 4 Americans is on MySpace, in the UK it’s as common to have a MySpace as it is to own a dog
  
• On average 300,000 new people sign up to MySpace every day
  
• 60,000 new videos being upload to MySpaceTV each day
  
• More than 8 million artists and bands on MySpace Music Acts
  
• MySpace was purchased in 2005 for $580 million by Rupert Murdoch creator of a media empire that includes 20th Century Fox and the Fox television stations
  
• Google paid $900 million to be MySpace's search provider
  

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn is an online network of more than 30 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries
  
• 95% of LinkedIn members are college educated
  
• 37% are post graduates
  
• 24% have a portfolio value of $250k+
  
• The average age of a LinkedIn professional is 41 years old
  
• The household income is $110k
  
• 64% of LinkedIn professionals are male
  

Second Life

• Second Life was launched June 23, 2003
  
• At the beginning of September, 2008, just over 15 million accounts were registered
  
• In January 2008, residents spent 28,274,505 hours "inworld", so on average about 38,000 residents were logged on at any particular moment
  
• In 2006 former Governor of Virginia Mark Warner became the first politician to appear in a MMO when he gave a speech in Second Life
  
• There are a total of 15,736,434 residents in Second Life
  
• In October 2008, 127,417,424square meters of land was sold by residents
  

Flickr

• As of November 2008, Flickr claims to host more than 3 billion images
  
• Flickr was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver based company that launched Flickr in February 2004
  
• In March 2005, Yahoo! acquired Ludicorp and Flickr
  
• Despite having only a 2 megapixel camera, the iPhone continues to be the most popular cameraphone used on Flickr
  

YouTube

• YouTube user base is in age range of 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies
  
• 51% of users go to YouTube weekly or more often
  
• 52% of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues.
  
• YouTube has 71 million unique users each month
  
• YouTube is the 6th largest audience on the Internet
  
• YouTube was the number one video site on the Internet as of January - with 67.5 million unique users in the U.S., according to Nielsen NetRatings
  
• Every minute, 10 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube
  
• Of the 9.5 billion online videos watched in the U.S. in November last year, 2.9 billion of those were watched on YouTube, according to Comscore
  
• In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for 1.65 billion in Google stock
  
• In the first month on YouTube, 70% of videos get at least 20 views
  
• In the first month on YouTube, 50% of videos get at least 100 views
  
• In the first month on YouTube, fewer than 20% of videos get more than 500 views
  
• In the first month on YouTube, fewer than 10% of videos get more than 1, 500 views
  
• In the first month on YouTube, 3% of videos get more than 25, 000 views
  
• In the first month on YouTube, around 1% of videos get more than 500, 000 views
  

Technorati

• Since 2002, Over 70 million weblogs are tracked by Technorati.
  
• 76,000 blogs with Technorati Authroity of 50+
  
• 57% of U.S. bloggers are male
  
• 42% of U.S. bloggers are between the ages of 18-34
  
• 26% of U.S. bloggers are single
  
• 56% of U.S. bloggers have full-time jobs
  
• 74% of U.S. bloggers are college graduates
  
• 52% of U.S. blogs have advertising
  
• 73% of European bloggers are male
  
• 48% of European bloggers are between the ages of 18-34
  
• 31% of European bloggers are single
  
• 53% of European bloggers have full-time jobs
  
• 67% of European bloggers are college graduates
  
• 50% of European blogs have advertising
  
• 73% of Asian bloggers are male
  
• 73% of Asian bloggers are between the ages of 18-34
  
• 57% of Asian bloggers are single
  
• 45% of Asian bloggers have full-time jobs
  
• 69% of Asian bloggers are college graduates
  
• 60% of Asian blogs have advertising
  
• More than 120k blogs are added to blogosphere each day. That’s about 1.4 blogs created every second of every day.
  
• Technorati has been tracking 3000-7000 spam blogs each day
  
• On an average, Technorati tracks 1.4 million posts per day, that’s around 15 posts per second
  
• Out of the top 100 sites, only 22 are tracked by Technorati
  
• In terms of blog posts by language, Japanese is at the top spot with 37% followed closely by English at 36%
  

Last Thursday, I was invited to attend the Macallen whiskey tasting in downtown Dallas. Pictured above is the swag bag I got after the event. I RSVPed and invited along three fellow longhorns to indulge in a night of alcohol. Upon arriving, the event was hosted in a museum and quite decadent to say the least. I was expecting a yuppie crowd, but there were some veteran whiskey drinkers at the event. My assumption was Macallen was trying to target the newly young professional who had not had an affinity for a certain whiskey brand and they wanted to be that choice.

We started the night with a tasting of a two year old whiskey. The "brand ambassador" aka the night's presenter started the night with a presentation that encompassed a slew of topics from luxury cars, Scotland, Macallen distribution and anything related to whiskey. About every 10 minutes into the presentation they would serve another tasting of whiskey, a total of four throughout the night. Each tasting progressively was aged longer and was supposed to taste better, but to me all whiskey taste the same. The final tasting was aged 18 years old.

During the presentation it made wonder how much it cost for the whole event to be thrown and who was behind it, if they partnered with an agency or if it was all in house. It was fun, I wouldn't mind doing something like this.

How novel is the team at Weeds? Their team sent out bouquets of hemp plants wrapped up to look like a marijuana joint to the press and media agencies to promote the premiere of the series. Personally, I've never seen the show, but if I were to receive this I would definitely give it a watch. The clever tie-in between the show with something deliverable and visual is definitely worth mentioning.

History has been made and Obama is now the 44th elected president of the United States. Surprisingly, the election wasn't as close as people predicted. Way to go!

Looks like Starbucks is giving out free coffee to anyone who says they voted on Tuesday. Pretty smart marketing to me. It shows they're supporting a cause and it drives traffic and exposure to their business. Let's talk about the actually video - I think it's genius. It's simple and straight forward. The background music has a sense of urgency and reminds me of another cause video, but I can't remember it right now, maybe it'll come to me later. It contains text that moves dynamically throughout the screen with content that has one goal in mind: to get you thinking.

I'm definitely grabbing a free coffee on Tuesday.

**update** I remember what the music reminded me of, the real beauty videos from Dove! Thoughts?