Twitter has raised a new round of financing at a $100 million dollar valuation.

Benchmark Capital, Spark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners are returning investors and were involved in the new offering. There were also two new shareholders added to the mix, T. Rowe Price and Insight Venture Partners.

The terms of the deal will not be disclosed, including neither the total amount Twitter has raised (except to say it was a significant sum) nor any indication as to the investment weights from each investor.

We just know that Twitter was valued at $1 billion after internal people familiar with the matter confirmed the valuation to the AP.

The new funds will be used to fund company operations, and could include purchasing new equipment to grow the service and even expand the current 60-strong workforce.

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Dole Food, one of the biggest producers and marketers of produce have filed for an initial public offering (IPO) with the SEC.

According to the prospectus, the company wants to raise up to $500 million by selling common stock (undisclosed expected share price) via the IPO.

Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo will be underwriting the IPO according to the SEC filing.

The company plans to trade on the NYSE with the ticker DOLE.

It is unclear as to exactly when this would happen.

TechCrunch is reporting VC firm General Atlantic has submitted a term sheet with a $2 billion valuation to Facebook. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg previously said they would only raise new funds at the previous $15 billion valuation, a valuation that will not be happening now.

Facebook will soon need to raise money as the company continues to experience explosive growth, burning about $20 million a month in cash to support operations.

Facebook may also go for an IPO given the company recently ousted CFO Gideon Yu, looking for a CFO with public company experience.

Reports indicate that Facebook is currently looking at raising new debt capital to replace a current $100 million line of credit. Facebook is projecting to generate over $400 million in advertising revenue in 2009. Facebook is believed to have $300 million in current cash as of right now. The issue here is, what is Facebook really worth as it tries to raise capital?

On February 12, 2009, Facebook board member/investor Peter Thai explained why a Twitter acquisition never happened: the deal would Read the full story

BlackBerry maker RIM has just announced it will be investing $3.2 million from the $150 million strong BlackBerry Partners Fund in popular email/contact management tool Xobni. The investment comes as RIM faces increased competition from the iPhone and among other phone makers. The investment could be an indication that Xobni could be going mobile to the BlackBerry as RIM tries to make its BB more social. Read the full story

Pixazza is a new start-up that hopes to become the AdSense of photos. The company has developed software that identifies items in pictures and matches them to real products people can purchase. The company users real product experts to help match related products. For example, when visiting your favorite celebrity site, if you find something that looks great on someone, if available, you will be able to mouse-over to get pricing on related products, and click to learn more and buy.

“Pixazza’s unique technical advantage is its crowdsourcing platform,” said CTO James Everingham. “No computer algorithm can identify a black pair of Jimmy Choo boots from the 2009 fall collection as well as a person. Rather than rely on computer algorithms, our platform enlists product experts to drive the process.”

Pixazza has raised a Series A fund worth $5.75 million from Google Read the full story

Social status sharing San Francisco based site Twitter has just raised an additional $35 million from Benchmark Capital and IVP, $21 million and $14 million, respectively. TechCrunch is reporting that IVP partner Todd Chaffee told them the round was actually in excess of $35 million, though is yet to be confirmed. Twitter is really exploding in popularity, recently beating Digg in the number of weekend visitors. Twitter has now raised a total of $55 million to date since its March 2006 launch.

U.S. consumer borrowing has fallen to a 65 year low. The U.S. Federal Reserve has reported consumer borrowing was $7.94 billion in November 2008, down 3.7% from October. The drop represented the biggest decline in consumer borrowing in 65 years. Borrowing included credit card loans, car loans and other consumer loans.

Xobni, the popular e-mail/contact management Outlook addon, has now closed a $7 million Series B VC round of financing. The company has now received $11.4 million in VC financing as of today. The round was led by Cisco, previous investors including Baseline Ventures, First Round Capital and Atomico also participated. Via