Celebrities have been dropping like flies in recent weeks, with Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, and Billy Mays all having parted ways with the living. If you follow feeds on Twitter, you may have thought a lot more passed on, making you wonder if there really is something unsanitary flowing in Hollywood's water. That's because hackers have been gaining access to celebrity accounts and sending out bogus death notices for the likes of Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Jeff Goldblum, and P. Diddy.

"Britney has passed today," the fake tweet announced on Sunday. "It is a sad day for everyone. More news to come."

After learning of the message, Spears' staff tweeted that the pop singer's account had been compromised and that "She is fine and dandy spending a quiet day at home relaxing."

To gain access to celebrity accounts, hackers took advantage of a vulnerability allowing them to try every pin combination possible until one worked. Twitter claims a "fix has been put in place to prevent ths from happening."

Twitter has been one of the hottest topics in the past several years, being linked to everything from potential terrorists attacks to celebrity slugfests, and even an upcoming Twitter-based reality show. Turns out it's also pretty effective marketing tool capable of boosting sales by millions of dollars.

Try $3 million, to be exact, which is how much Dell said Twitter helped the OEM rake in from followers who clicked through its posts. Of those sales, Dell made $1 million in the past 6 months alone.

"We're going to watch it over time to make sure it's tracking at the right level," said Lionel Menchaca, Dell's chief blogger. "It is trending upward and that's what we're going to be looking at overall."

Compared to Dell's $12.3 billion revenue for Q1 of this year, $3 million in sales doesn't seem like much. But no matter how much the world's second largest PC maker brings in, it's tough to scoff at millions of dollars, especially for those from the outside looking in and wondering what Twitter can do for them.