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A much-publicized funding round for Twitter is finally come to an end as reported earlier in the week by AllThingsD. The dollar amount was $200 million at a valuation of $3.7 billion, led by investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and coming with that Twitter has hired Mike McCue, CEO of buzzy iPad app start-up Flipboard, and David Rosenblatt, former CEO of DoubleClick.

Twitter has confirmed the funding round and additions to its board–divertingly terming it a “stocking stuffer”–but is withholding any further information on how it will be channeled into product strategy or hiring. Presumably, Twitter will continue to look out for engineering resources-technical and human, to support its growing subscriber base while its marketing product remains in a ductile, experimental phase. The round will also possibly allow long serving employees to cash out some company stock–much as Facebook did when Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies first invested in the social network.

Twitter’s previous funding round was nearly a year ago, and was equally a big amount–about $100 million, a round which one Twitter investor later said was not informed by a financial need.

Twitter has aggressively moved to a “business mode” over the past nine months or so, announcing its first revenue strategy in April. In October, CEO Evan Williams had to resign so that the more finance- and operations-focused Dick Costolo could come in.

Dell Location Pro Palms On

The Location Pro would be the new Dell cell phone that makes use of Windows 7, and is coming to a store close to you. It has had lots of media coverage over the past week or so as it is Dell’s new flagship telephone. In spite of that, it truly appears to be really great. Considering the state of your past Dell Aero and the Android phone they developed for AT&T, it is going to have to be.

The Location Professional smacks of being primarily a phone for business users. It’s solid, weighty and has a reassuring bulk about it that hints at longevity. It has a raised area on the back, and tough, scratch resistant glass on for the screen. It’s the same material Dell makes use of on the Streak, so we know it works really well.

The Venue Professional just feels more like a corporate mobile than a sleek, shiny consumer unit. There isn’t anything in there especially for businesses users, not as far as we could see, but much like the Blackberry, even though consumers can still use them, they lack the appeal of your iPhone or others.

That said, the new Dell telephone packs quite a punch, whoever makes use of it. There’s a large 4.1” screen, which is ideal for the Windows 7 interface. While the screen size does make the cell phone a little bulky, it’s much easier to see what’s going on, and to use the applications effectively. It is a little larger than an HTC or LG Optimus, but not so much that it becomes unwieldy.

The cell phone comes with a QWERTY keyboard, with rounded raised buttons. Even pudgy fingers like mine could tap out a text message in a few seconds, and had no problem navigation my way round. Dell phones are relatively new, so we don’t know how hardy these guys are, but the solid construction gives us a feeling of confidence. Let’s just hope the electronics are up to the job.

The Venue Pro is a slider mobile phone, which keeps the orientation vertical, which neatly circumvents the Windows 7 screen issue where it prefers portrait mode to landscape.
Hardware wise, it has a 1-GHz Qualcomm QSD8250 processor, a 5-megapixel camera, and 16GB of storage. This appears pretty standard for Windows phones right now, and so far has been more than capable of running the OS and applications.

Using the phone comes some Dell telephone goodies, such as a year’s subscription to Pageonce Personal Finance. If you get it through T-Mobile you also get Netflix, T-Mobile TV, Slacker, Telenav and other apps. To get the cellphone through T-Mobile you’re going to have to order direct from Dell, as these aren’t going retail. No T-Mobile keep will have these in stock, so it’s mail order only I’m afraid.

From our brief test, the Venue Professional looks like a significant step forward for Dell phones. It’s slick, quick, and appears perfectly capable of handling anything you can throw at it.