Khris Loux is the founder and CEO of Echo, a commenting platform. He tweets at @Khrisloux.

With leadership from its founders and a significant infusion of cash from investors, Twitter has created an innovative no-charge service for users and industry-standard APIs for developers. But more recently, access to its data through those APIs has been fairly inconsistent, with particularly opaque procedures for getting at its most coveted dataset, its full stream of Tweets.

Twitter has recently begun selling publishers, big and small, access to all its Tweets. Its licensing of the “full firehose,” as it is also known, to Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) marks Twitter’s first big move towards monetization. The micro-blogging company has yet to make public the terms of these deals, but according to one report, Twitter is bringing in a combined $25 million from those agreements. Meanwhile, Twitter has granted small startups access to the same data at rates “proportional to the size of the company,” according to Ryan Sarver, Director of Platform at Twitter.

Special offers on many of the popular smartphones in the fourth quarter drove penetration to nearly a third in the U.S., according to The NPD Group, a wireless market research.

The report found that smartphones are now in the hands of about 31 percent of the U.S. population, growing from only 23 percent in the year-ago period. Of those phones purchased in the fourth-quarter, nearly two-thirds cost $150 or less, and many more were bought for even less. “Although we are seeing more expensive models among the best-selling handsets, carriers are now offering some popular smartphones for less than $100,” said Ross Rubin, NPD’s executive director.

»  An app-happy world has one research firm tripling its projection for total U.S. app revenue in 2010 from $537 million to $1.6 billion. [MoBlog]

»  Nokia (NYSE: NOK) CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo discusses the company’s U.S. and acquisition strategies, and says how the Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) partnership has its benefits. [BusinessWeek]

»  Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) discontinues protective iPhone/iTouch screen films, possibly in an attempt to show off screen durability. [iLounge]

»  Porsche is marketing a new phone for Porsche owners who really, really want people to be aware of their wealth. [Reuters]

»  T-Mobile will release the Windows Mobile 6.5-powered HTC HD2 on March 24 for $199.99 with a two-year contract. [Gearlog]

Just as Google (NSDQ: GOOG) starts being more aggressive at rolling out the Nexus One to more carriers, it was socked in the gut with this bad news: its trademark application for the phone has been denied.

Google’s application was denied because of “a likelihood of confusion” with a trademark held by Integra Telecom’s ‘Nexus’ brand, reports MarketWatch. That didn’t stop Sprint (NYSE: S) from announcing today that a version of the Nexus One will be available soon for its network. Just yesterday, Google said a compatible version was available for AT&T (NYSE: T) and Rogers in Canada.

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has hinted for several months that it would be buying more companies and it’s finally made an acquisition—buying up social sports startup Citizen Sports, which it says will compliment Yahoo Sports, the top sports site in the U.S.

And, indeed, the move immediately gives Yahoo clout in the social networking and mobile sports spaces, where it has been weak. Citizen Sports owns a series of popular sports apps on the iPhone and on social networking sites, including what it says is the most popular fantasy football app on Facebook. By contrast, Yahoo has long been the top player in the online fantasy sports market, but only last September did it release a fantasy football iPhone app and, as far as I can tell, it does not have any sports apps at all on Facebook.

Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel may unveil the first 4G phone next week at the big CTIA wireless conference in Las Vegas.

The device, which is reportedly made by HTC and called ‘the Supersonic,’ will run on the company’s WiMax network, which is being built by Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR), reports the Wall Street Journal, which quotes people familiar with the matter.

If the company does reveal a device, it will easily beat Verizon Wireless to the punch, which is not expected to have a 4G handset, running on its LTE network, until mid-2011.

MocoSpace, a social network that is primarily accessed on the phone, has reached 11 million users.

While that may pale in comparison to the 100 million people using Facebook on cellphones, it easily surpasses the 560,000 using Foursquare. However, it is more in line with the 500,000 users that MocoSpace says are logging in on a daily basis to the network. MocoSpace VP of Business Development & Marketing Casey Jones said: “Scale is a critical piece to being able to deliver on the promise of our targeting capabilities. We are very fortunate to have a large, growing, and loyal audience.”

Here’s another chart with hockey stick-like projections for the global mobile applications space: The market is set to grow to $17.5 billion by 2012, which will be greater than the value of all CDs estimated to be sold that year. The report was commissioned by GetJar, which distributes free applications on the behalf of developers worldwide, and was conducted by Consultant Chetan Sharma.

Universal Music Group was early to tap into the whole music gaming phenomenon by partnering with Tapulous to make iPhone apps for artists such as Lady Gaga and Souja Boy Tell ‘Em.

Now it’s branching off and working with others to create even more gaming applications. The record label’s latest app is called Six-String and is now available for $4.99 from the App Store for the iPhone or iPod touch. The game was developed by Frontier, which makes popular guitar simulators for the iPhone. The app will be used to highlight new releases, such as The Scorpions’ “Raised on Rock,” which can already be played on the phone, even though the album isn’t due out until March 23. A spokesman said the game is totally separate from the apps it is making from Tapulous: “This about us leveraging our core assets further to expand the musical experience for consumers.”

News Corp.-owned IGN Entertainment, which includes both the video game network of the same name, as well as sites like AskMen, is going through a major round of layoffs. In an all-staff memo sent today, IGN president Roy Bahat says that while the company has been “doing well—we’re profitable and our audience continues to grow,” it’s “still feeling the effects of the economy, and we need to make sure we can invest where there is opportunity.” He says jobs are being cut “in every part of the company.” The memo—which we obtained our own copy of and which is included in its entirety after the jump—was first posted by Joystiq.

»  Actual Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPad sales may be higher than the estimates. [TheStreet.com]

»  Though BlackBerry is still the most popular smartphone, a study shows 40 percent of users would switch to iPhone and 30 percent to Nexus One. [InfoWorld]
»  Early Nexus One sales are disappointing. [DigitalDaily]

»  Opera released the final versions of Opera Mini 5 and Opera Mobile 10 on all mobile phones. [Release]