BROKEN NEWS: MSNBC takes over Twitter Breaking News

[link to www.bnonews.com]

MSNBC Takes Over @BreakingNews

Based on a media report, that was the first tweet from BNO News on May 13, 2007 at 7.07 p.m. EDT. We have come far since we posted that tweet, something which started as a hobby in the Netherlands and grew into a business that gained international coverage over the last year.

Today, we’ll be taking another step that will allow us to grow much further: leaving Twitter and building an international news agency. Starting today (Tuesday) at 8.30 a.m. EST, MSNBC.com officially assumed control over @BreakingNews and will manage it from now on. It is important to note that MSNBC.com will not take over BNO News as a company, and will have no influence over our future operations which includes any of our content. BNO News has always been and remains completely independent. However, I believe that MSNBC.com will do its best to continue to offer a great service to everyone on our Twitter account – which is what BNO News has tried to do, and hopefully achieved to do, in the past two years.

Of course I would have not agreed to this if I was not confident that our Twitter account, with nearly 1.5 million followers, would be in good hands. We build one of the largest group of followers on Twitter and without you, BNO News wouldn’t be what it is today. To continue to offer a great service via Twitter, MSNBC.com has created a team which will manage the @BreakingNews feed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — just as BNO News has been doing.

As MSNBC.com’s Cory Bergman put it on his blog last week: “We’ll continue aggregating breaking news from local, national and international media sources, giving credit where credit is due. We’ll link msnbc.com from time to time, but many links will go to other sources, even our competitors.” [..] “BNO News’ @breakingnews is already the most diverse, comprehensive breaking news account on Twitter, and our goal is to make it even better.”

BNO News will now move forward and move beyond the limitations of Twitter. January 2010 will mark the launch of the BNO News Wire, a subscription-based service which will only be available to publishers. This will mean that the public will have no direct access to our full content. However, we will continue to offer BNO News content via our iPhone application, which can be downloaded HERE. We will also continue our e-mail alert service, although the frequency of alerts will be low.

MSNBC.com will also become one of the first clients of the BNO News Wire service, and will use some of our reporting on the @BreakingNews Twitter account. Yesterday (Monday), BNO News also announced its second client and we remain in talks with other publishers who are seeking access to our new service.

I’d further like to suggest that journalists sign up for our press distribution list on our website (click here to register) to receive press updates from our company. I’d also like to encourage any publications who are interested in our news wire service, to contact us via our website (click here for our contact page).

I realize that not everyone will be happy with our decision to leave Twitter, and hand over to MSNBC.com. But this will not be the end of BNO News, we will remain active on our iPhone application and return in 2010 with a professional news wire service as we announced last week.

I’d like to thank all our followers for their support over the past two years, and especially our editors who worked so hard — often long days and nights — to offer you a great service. I’d like to thank Rodrigo, Damo Storan, Joe Brooks, Joda Thongnopnua, Mathew Peterson, and everyone else who worked hard on @BreakingNews and made it a great success — far beyond what I had ever imagined when I created our Twitter account in May 2007.

In case you missed it, here is last week’s press release.

– Michael van Poppel / @mpoppel
President, BNO News