London – June 30 2009 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: JAVA) today announced that TweetMeme, the innovative online application that tracks the popularity of links sent via Twitter, has subscribed to Sun's MySQL Enterprise database offering in order to keep up with the microblogging service's explosive growth.

Created in 2008 by pioneering Web 2.0 startup Fav.or.it, TweetMeme gives the rapidly expanding Twitter community a means of easily seeing and sorting the most popular links on Twitter. TweetMeme also provides a realtime search facility of fully expanded, qualified and indexed links so that users can get answers to queries about very recent events or news.

With Twitter's user-base growing at approximately 82% month-over-month for the first half of 2009, TweetMeme has had to manage incredible scalability demands being placed upon its database infrastructure. As a member of the Sun Startup Essentials programme, TweetMeme has cost-effectively upgraded from Sun’s MySQL Community Edition to MySQL Enterprise deployed on Sun Fire x86 Servers. With this new “Scale- Out” deployment, TweetMeme is now analysing, categorizing and indexing 50,000+ links per hour as well as serving over 600 Million retweet buttons per month. TweetMeme is confident that it also now has the right infrastructure to accommodate significant future growth.

“TweetMeme has seen incredible growth in 2009 as the number of Twitter users and the volume of traffic they create has dramatically increased.” said Nick Halstead, founder of Fav.or.it, the company behind TweetMeme. “With the combination of Sun Startup Essentials and MySQL Enterprise, we are able to scale our business whilst saving significant time and money.”

MySQL Enterprise includes Sun's expert technical support for the database and memcached as well as advanced monitoring tools, which enable TweetMeme to optimise application performance whilst maximising application uptime.

“Through the Sun Startup Essentials programme, Sun is perfectly placed to deliver huge value to TweetMeme with MySQL Enterprise software and Sun Fire x86 servers,” said Richard Mason, Vice President, Sun Software Europe. “We are delighted that yet another innovative online business has chosen MySQL Enterprise as the cornerstone of their infrastructure.”

About Sun's MySQL Database

MySQL is the most popular open source database software in the world. Many of the world's largest and fastest-growing organizations use MySQL to save time and money powering their high-volume Web sites, critical business systems, communications networks, and commercial software. At http://www.mysql.com, Sun provides corporate users with premium subscriptions and services, and actively supports the large MySQL open source developer community.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network is the Computer" -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, JavaScript, JavaFX, NetBeans and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.