[Nettime-nl] dutch teenager cashes-in on twitter's suggested users list placement

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

Gevonden op Dave Winer's blog:

The BBC reports: "A Twitter feed set up by a Dutch teenager as a hobby  
has been taken over by Microsoft news channel MSNBC.com."

The report emphasizes the rate that the feed is growing, by 3000 to  
4000 followers per day. What it doesn't say is that the feed is on  
Twitter's Suggested Users List, and that growth is normal for feeds on  
the list, even ones that aren't run by prodigious teens.

Editorial comment: Might as well say that a Dutch teenager amazes his  
parents by traveling from Europe to America in a matter of hours.  
Without saying that he booked a flight on KLM. :-)

We live in a time of pseudo news.

Another observation. It would be interesting to know how much  
Microsoft paid for his feed. That would, right there, establish the  
monetary value of SUL placement.

Dave Winer

---

BBC: MSNBC.com takes over Breaking News Twitter feed

The BreakingNews feed attracts 3000 new followers a day
A Twitter feed set up by a Dutch teenager as a hobby has been taken  
over by Microsoft news channel MSNBC.com.

The BreakingNews feed, operated by BNO News and set up by 19-year-old  
Michael van Poppel two years ago, was handed to MSNBC.com on December 1.

The feed delivers breaking news to more than 1.5m readers.

BNO News will no longer write Twitter updates and is now planning to  
launch a subscription-based news wire service aimed at other news  
outlets in the US.

The company was set up as a hobby Mr Poppel, 19, in the Netherlands in  
May 2007.

"It started as something I did in my free time, with no real  
intentions to grow it into a real business," he told BBC News.

"We went from 30,000 (followers) in, I believe, March, to nearly 1.5  
million today - and the number is growing by 3,000 to 4,000 daily".

The company's new venture, BNO News Wire, will launch in January 2010  
and aims to be a more comprehensive newsgathering service.

MSNBC.com will be the wire's first client when it launches in January  
2010. It will focus on news from around the United States.

"Our Twitter feed has always aimed at American subscribers, which  
means some local news in the United States would be posted on  
@BreakingNews - and something similar which would have happened for  
example in the UK would not have reached our service," said Mr van  
Poppel.

In September 2007, Mr van Poppel acquired a video of Osama Bin Laden  
and sold it to the news gathering agency Reuters.
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