Today in Tech: bin Laden news sets Twitter record, Sony Online hacked, too

A curated selection of the day’s most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you everyday.

The BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930

Research In Motion announced a major update to its smartphone operating system, BlackBerry 7, and the first smartphone to come loaded with it, the BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930, due out some time this summer. The new device sports a 1.2 GHz processor, graphics processing unit (GPU), 768 MB RAM, 2.8-inch touschscreen, 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording capability, and 8 GB of onboard storage. The BlackBerry 7 OS itself should offer an easier and faster user experience and voice-activated search. No legacy support though, which means all current BlackBerry owners can’t upgrade their devices with it. (Engadget and Boy Genius Report)
News of Osama bin Laden’s death sent Internet traffic through the roof Sunday night. Case in point: Twitter users shot off 5,106 tweets a second at the news event’s peak — second only to Japan’s celebration of the 2011 new year — while the average rate of tweets clocked in at 3,000 per second, a new record. (CNNMoney)
Twitter reportedly bought third-party service TweetDeck for somewhere between $40 million and $50 million; the deal should be announced within the next few days. (TechCrunch)
Hot on the heels of the PlayStation Network breach comes news that Sony Online Entertainment’s servers have been hacked, too, resulting in illegal access to 24.6 million users’ account information and the loss of 12,700 non-U.S. credit card numbers. (Engadget)
Yahoo hired away Huffington Post editor Jai Singh to serve as the Internet giant’s editor-in-chief, a decision the Huff Post says was based primarily on location. (Singh’s current job required him to work in New York, but his family lives in California.) (All Things D)
Colleague Dan Primack broke the news that Gaia Online CEO Craig Sherman has agreed to join Meritech Capital Partners as the venture capital firm’s fifth partner. (Fortune)
In his most recent interview, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange calls Facebook the “most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented” and makes sure to lump in Google, Yahoo and other major U.S. organizations into that category as well. Here’s an edited version of the sit-down. (Russia Today via The Next Web)