After yesterday’s tragic news regarding the unexpected death of the ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson, Twitter was in a flurry of related messages mourning the death of one of music’s most respected musicians. But it would seem not all wanted to pay their respects, but instead attempt to use the news as a way to attract people to a website.

This is exactly what the official Google Maps API twitter account did, by sending the following tweet, which they have since deleted:

Soon after sending the senseless self-promoting tweet, they clearly received a large amount of negative replies, or realised the error in using the tragic news as a means of promotion, as a follow up tweet apologising was sent out. Your thoughts?

Facebook offered $500 Million, Microsoft have hinted at it, and Google offered stock in addition to cash. It would seem every big player has attempted to buy Twitter, and the latest rumor circulating the web is that Apple are interested in acquiring the San Francisco company.

Various sources hint that Apple are in “late talks” with the company, and hoping to announce the acquisition, if successful, at the upcoming WWDC this June. All of this comes after Twitter made it perfectly clear that they currently have little interest in being snapped up.

Evan Williams tweeted yesterday that he had some “tough decisions” to make, so who knows whats in store. But for now, this is purely just a rumor.

A few days ago Twitter announced, via the API Wiki, that a “Sign in with Twitter” feature was now available. This sign in feature will allow users to sign into (participating) third-party sites with their Twitter login information. This release of this service can be seen as a direct response to the similar services offered by Facebook and Google. Facebook’s service “Facebook Connect” seems to be missing a trick, as where as Twitter’s solution is realtively an ‘open’ solution, Facebook Connect comes with a long list of do’s and don’t for those implementing it.

Chief Executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, was quoted on Thursday as saying that the search giant would be “very happy to pursue” an advertising relationship with Twitter, this comes after comments from Schmidt claiming he belives that Twitter prooves that innovation is still alive in Silicon Valley.

“The question is how could you make some money on that? Without comment specifically about Twitter, because there are a number of real-time update companies like Twitter, you can imagine that to the degree they become successful, and obviously Twitter is already doing so, it could be a channel for product information, marketing information, real-time information, for which you can hang advertising products, whether it’s a text ads or video ads.

I don’t know personally their strategy, but it strikes me that’s a logical strategy to pursue. It’s something we’d be very happy to pursue with them and all the other players in that space.” – Eric Schmidt

The question remains, will Twitter give Google the pleasure of serving advertisements to the Twitter masses?