Today’s an exciting day for Twitter, social media, mass collaboration and charity; Twestival, the fundraising drive organised primarily through the social messaging medium by more than 1,000 volunteers in 175 cities across the world will bring together between 10,000 and 20,000 tweeple to raise funds for charity:water, with the aim of bringing clean, safe drinking water to thousands of people in the developing world.

Jemima Kiss at The Guardian reports on the origins of Twestival, including an interview with co-founder and driving force Amanda Rose, who hasn’t had more than 4 hours sleep every night in the run up to the big day. Rose says:

“I would do cartwheels if we made over $1m … That would pay for 50,000 people to get safe clean drinking water for 20 years, so they can spend less of the day finding water and more time being educated. If everyone just gave $20, that would give one person clean water for the rest of their life.”

New York Twestival organiser Paull Young has a guide up on Mashable of 5 ways to help Twestival reach their goal of raising $1m. While real-life meetups spun out of online communities are nothing new, The New York Times’ Bits blog’s interview with Amanda Rose suggests that Twitter has a slight difference which has made Twestival possible:

“… the Twitter community is particularly adept at mobilizing Internet activity into real-world action because the undercurrent of social currency is strong within the service’s ever-expanding community.”

Update: If you haven’t secured a Twestival ticket or just want to see how other cities kick it, check out the Twestival Live Earth realtime streaming site.

Elsewhere on the web:

Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch reports on the Associated Press hack which reveals that Facebook is worth just $3.7 billion, and posts other juicy details of the Facebook/ConnectU settlement.

Om Malik sends out a distress signal on behalf of Blip.fm, which the Wall Street Journal reports is in deep waters.

Days after its launch, Google’s Social Web Blog has announced a new social media tool launch from the Friend Connect team: the social bar, which concentrates many of the basic social functions into a small strip at the top or bottom of a webpage. The social bar is customizable and can be used in addition to existing gadgets. Here’s an example of the social bar in action and Google’s video explaining more:

Twitter addicts, rejoice! There’s a new version of TweetDeck on the way, and Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb has a sneak preview of the new features, including language translation, more coherent hashtag support and easier group management.