“At least 10 people are dead after an explosion at a restaurant in Orsk, Russia.”

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

TILBURG/BANGKOK – November 30, 2009 – BNO News today announced that it signed a contract with Thaindian News, the second client of the BNO News Wire, a business venture focused on providing comprehensive news coverage to news media companies around the world.

Thaindian News, a news portal based in Bangkok, syndicates news articles from a number of news agencies and produces dozens of news stories daily from its editors. The website targets traffic from search engines such as Google News. Currently, the website reaches more than four million visitors a month, or about 150,000 people daily.

The agreement, for which financial details were not released, will allow Thaindian News to syndicate a selection of news articles from the BNO News Wire. The service is expected to launch in early January.

“Our website targets people who search for news stories on websites such as Google News,” said Sajal Kayan, Thaindian News Editor-in-Chief. “BNO News has shown repeatedly it is able to report first on important stories. This is important for websites such as ours as visitors often trawl websites and search engines to find details on breaking news stories.”

The BNO News Wire was announced last week after MSNBC.com signed up as its first client, and BNO News is currently in talks with other publishers.

“I welcome Thaindian News as the second client of our forthcoming news wire service,” said Michael van Poppel, President and founder of BNO News. “Our discussions with publishers have shown there is a great demand for a new player in the news wire market, especially in the United States, and we hope to welcome additional clients in the near future.”

Additional details about BNO News’ Wire Service will be offered to media organizations and publishers upon request.

# # #

PRESS CONTACTS:
BNO News contact: press@bnonews.com
Thaindian News contact: press@thaindian.com

ON THE WEB:
BNO News: http://www.bnonews.com
Thaindian News: http://www.thaindian.com

“BNO News will not only deliver its content in new formats and use new methods to bring news faster to the customer, but will also work closely with its clients to match their needs and standards.”
 
“News consumers increasingly demand a variety of sources and viewpoints, even while they expect information to find them whenever and wherever they want it,” said Jennifer Sizemore, msnbc.com Editor-in-Chief. “BNO News has built its audience following these principles and we are excited to use our partnership with them to build on the fastest, most comprehensive feed of breaking news on Twitter.” 
 
With msnbc.com recently becoming BNO News’ first client, the company is now in talks with other publishers.
 
“BNO News has shown it is capable of making a difference in the news industry, and the launch of our subscription-based news wire service to media companies will allow us to grow further,” Van Poppel added. “While the BNO News Wire Service will be an international product, it will also offer local content to local media outlets in the United States.”
 
Additional details about BNO News’ Wire Service will be offered to media organizations and publishers upon request.
 
BNO News contact:
Michael van Poppel, President.
mpoppel@bnonews.com
+31 13 535 1304. If not available: +31 615 4341 74.
 
Msnbc.com contact:
MediaInquiries@msnbc.com
 
On the Web:
BNO News: http://www.bnonews.com
Msnbc.com: http://msnbc.msn.com

BNO News, in conjunction with BitMethod, announced the release of an iPhone push application that will provide users the latest “breaking” news stories.  The move to the iPhone market is another important milestone for BNO News, which is currently providing services on Twitter, FriendFeed and via e-mail.

 To download the application, click here.

“Solid, innovative technologies such as the push notification service on the iPhone are enabling new ground breaking business models,” said Daniel E. Shipton, BitMethod’s Director of Business Development. “Our partnership with BNO News combines their rapid growing business and audience with our ability to expand their reach through new platforms like the iPhone.”

The iPhone application, called BNO News (Review from The Florida Times), will let users choose from several options to fit their needs, 24 hours per day and 7 days a week, no matter where they are. BNO News’ iPhone application was released at midnight today and is now available in the iPhone App  Store, at only $0.99 a month (after a download fee of $1.99).

BNO News’ iPhone application is the number one choice for customers to stay informed of breaking and developing news stories “on-the-go.” As our online-based news service has become known as a leader in breaking news, BNO Newswill have the advantage compared to other news-related applications. “Our decision to move to the iPhone market is only the first of several markets we intend to explore over the next year,” said Michael van Poppel, founder of  BNO News. “We are currently significantly expanding our original news reporting even further to provide our users with more in-depth content. We are excited to hear feedback from our iPhone customers, both positive as well as negative, so we can enhance our iPhone application further to provide an even better experience.”

The iPhone application syncs user preferences via Wi-Fi or the user’s cellular network and then downloads the latest news directly to the device. Users of the BNO News application are able to be notified of all our news updates or choose to only receive major news alerts. In any case, users are able to read back all the news updates in the application or suspend alerts for a certain period of time.

BNO News editors will be careful in the selection of news items, for both news streams, to ensure our users get what they ask for and trust us to do – enable them to stay “in the know” but without getting overwhelmed by news updates. “While BNO News has already seen extraordinary growth in the last few months, launching the BNO News iPhone application will enable us to provide our service to even more journalists, “news junkies” and anyone else who wants to stay informed,” said Rodrigo Javier Aguiar, co-founder of  BNO News. “We look forward continuing to work with BitMethod to explore other platforms to expand the reach of our services.”

Updates to the iPhone application will become available over the next few weeks and BNO Newsis currently also considering an expansion to other mobile markets, such as the BlackBerry and Google’s Android.

***

BNO News is a popular Internet-based news service which provides a combination of original news reporting with sourcing to credible news outlets at time. Overall, it now reaches about 1 million people around the world, most of them in the United States. In a December, 2008 survey, the majority of BNO News’ members described themselves as journalists and “news junkies.” To compare, in early March, BNO News only reached around 30,000 people. On this day, BNO News continues to grow rapidly with between 5,000 to 10,000 new users a day. Over the next few months, BNO News will announce further details regarding the future of its service.

BitMethod is a Des Moines, Iowa based app development firm focused on building interactive applications delivered on a variety of platforms. It specializes in building interactive applications for the web, mobile devices, and the desktop. Web standards are at the core of it’s technology expertise which includes Javascript, HTML, and RESTful service oriented APIs. Their focus is on simple, scalable systems architecture and clean, reusable code that enables rich user experiences. They make heavy use of technologies present on almost every device to provide cost effective cross platform development solutions.

To receive a free copy of the application, intended for reviews, publications are able to send a request to press@bnonews.com. Please state your name and the publication you work for. Further, users are able to submit questions, problems, suggestions or any other feedback on http://tinyurl.com/pdhnvx.

For questions and interviews related to BNO News, journalists can contact founder Michael van Poppel at mpoppel@bnonews.com. For any questions or interviews related to only BitMethod, journalists can contact Daniel E. Shipton at dan@bitmethod.com.