BNO News Blog

BNO News iPhone app media advisory

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:42:18 -0400

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: To receive Monday’s press release, and any future press release, send a request to press@bnonews.com . In this e-mail, please include the following: your name, the e-mail address you wish to receive e-mails on and the publication you work for. Your request cannot be completed until we have received the required information.

***MEDIA ADVISORY***

For Planning Purposes Only:
Monday, August 03, 2009

Contacts: Michael van Poppel
mpoppel@bnonews.com

Daniel E. Shipton
dan@bitmethod.com

Joint statement from BNO News and BitMethod

(TILBURG, the Netherlands) - BNO News, in conjunction with BitMethod, will release a joint statement later today regarding the launch of their previously announced iPhone application.

The launch marks another milestone in the history of BNO News as they continue to expand their services to people around the world.

WHO: Michael van Poppel, founder of BNO News, and Daniel E. Shipton, BitMethod’s Director of Business Development.

WHAT: Joint statement regarding the launch of BNO News’ iPhone application.

WHEN: Monday, August 03, 2009 at 12:00 PM EDT

WHERE: Press distribution list.
***

Powerful earthquake off southern New Zealand coast

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:13:00 -0400

Rodrigo Aguiar / BNO’s Mexico bureau chief (rjavier@bnonews.com)

We got word of a major earthquake on the morning of July 15, 2009, just after another big story: a passenger plane crash in Iran. The earthquake struck off New Zealand.

We think that every newsroom should be able to track at least several major developing stories at the same time. We don’t know why, possibly because of the plane crash coverage, but the first reports of the powerful earthquake near New Zealand reached the mainstream media late.

This is our timeline (ET).

05:23: A massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocks New Zealand.

05:42: A tsunami warning is issued for New Zealand by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. This is the first official word on the quake.

05:43: BNO News gets the official tsunami warning statement.

05:47: After checking the initial report from the United States Geological Survey for more parameters on the quake, the first bulletin is sent to our subscribers: BULLETIN — MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE OFF NEW ZEALAND.

05:48: Another bulletin is sent stating the magnitude and saying that a tsunami warning is in effect: BULLETIN — NEW ZEALAND UNDER TSUNAMI WARNING AFTER A MASSIVE 7.8 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE

05:56: Reuters is the first major news agency to alert its clients about the quake: MAGNITUDE 7.8 EARTHQUAKE STRIKES NEAR NEW ZEALAND — JAPAN METEOROLOGICAL AGENCY

06:04: Then, first word from The Associated Press: BC-AS—APNewsAlert/21 The USGS issues a tsunami warning after 7.8 magnitude earthquake hits off New Zealand . It should be noted that the USGS never issues tsunami warnings, and does not even calculate tsunami possibility. That is work of the tsunami warning centers.

06:08: The Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology issues a tsunami watch for much of its east coast including Sydney. An update is sent from BNO News via Twitter.

06:09: Then, first word from CNN: Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issues alert after 7.8-preliminary magnitude quake hits off New Zealand’s South Island.

06:36: The Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology, its sub-department is called the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre, upgrades the tsunami watch to a warning after a buoy in the ocean detected a tsunami. It was picked up by BNO News in only a matter of minutes: BULLETIN — JOINT AUSTRALIA TSUNAMI WARNING CENTRE ISSUES NATIONAL TSUNAMI WARNING. It’s interesting to know that the mainstream media did not cover this particular tsunami warning at all even though Australia’s Lord Howe Island had evacuated coastal areas and there was only little coverage from local media. A bulletin followed about one minute later, stating a tsunami had been generated: BULLETIN — OCEAN BUOY CONFIRMS TSUNAMI GENERATED AFTER MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE OFF NEW ZEALAND.

06:37 and after: Even though Australia remained under an active tsunami warning for several hours, the mainstream media’s coverage had already ended as the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled the tsunami warning for New Zealand itself. Throughout the coverage, while Iran’s plane crash was receiving “breaking news” attention, the earthquake was receiving only little attention as a “developing story.”

This particular event, even though no destructive tsunami was generated and no one died from the earthquake, just shows the lack of coverage from the mainstream media at times. The question is where people should turn to when the most accessible media fails to provide the most accurate and up-to-the-second information, which could be saving lives in events like this. Is a story about a deadly plane crash, which is not a developing event, really more important than a developing story which could threaten the lives of people?

NOTE: In this event, BNO News’ coverage was entirely based on BNO News sources and did not rely on any other media outlet. We are aware that there have been recent media reports which described BNO News as a “news aggregator-only” service, this is completely incorrect. BNO News has requested these articles to be edited, or to at least insert our view, but these publications have failed to do so, which we extremely regret. While we do use reporting from other publications at times, which will always make clear from which media outlet the information is coming from, we have an extensive news gathering operation. At this time, BNO News is working on our forthcoming services and can currently not afford to do original news coverage 24/7 and during these times we will include coverage from other sources which is, again, always saying it’s from another news source. This is our official blog and we will write more on our coverage in the next days.

Covering the H1N1 outbreak from ground zero

Wed, 06 May 2009 17:28:00 -0400

Rodrigo Aguiar / BNO’s Mexico bureau chief (rjavier@bnonews.com)

This started some weeks before the government sound the alarm. I saw some articles in the local papers about a new epidemic of common influenza in late April.

We knew that people were starting to die, but every year around 10,000 Mexicans die of influenza or flu related illness, so, the country was not so interested in the topic.

When the alarm was sounded, the first thing that we were thinking is something similar to the SARS in 2003 because some witnesses from hospitals were saying in the media that there was hundreds and hundreds of ill and they were dying very fast.

Another ingredient to this soup was the poor transparency from the government. The first days there was a soup of numbers of death and ill from different sources, and thats was reflected in the chaotic coverage in the media, and in BNO News.

By then, there was panic everywere after the government closed all schools across the country, limiting public gatherings and telling people to wear surgical masks and refrain from kissing and embracing.

I think at BNO the coverage was fair. When we realized that there was a little of overreaction, we decided to scale down all, and use personal twitters accounts for this info. Others were keeping the overreaction days and days, perhaps by rating reasons.

Some days passed and things changed. We were having two news conferences per day with government officials telling us about the effort to contain the virus, explaining us about how its transmitted, how we can protect ourselves.

This was a very fast situation. Started in a Friday, and the next week, there was evidence that the virus was not so lethal.

In my point of view, I think the response was appropriate. We saw in 2003 how China was covering the SARS outbreak and almost one thousand people died in Asia and America.

Some people here thinks that the government was not acting fast, but I think tracking outbreaks of new diseases is notoriously tricky.

There is heavy damage to the economy and to the country image right now. In my state, in the northwest of the country, tourism is down almost 50 percent. In other states is worst, like in Cancun.

Right now, there are 42 deaths. But because there is still testing underway from patients who died weeks ago, it will rise. We know the last dead was at least on April 30, a few days ago.

And overall, life changed. There is now an obsession with hygiene, cleaning everything, washing hands, people are carrying antibacterial gel and other things.

The economy was very bad before the outbreak, and the government just announced more measures to boost tourism but, we don’t know how much time it will take to see results. Things are almost back to normal now, but we don’t know how long it will take before we see a full economic recovery.

Denver plane "crash" background

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:00:00 -0500

About 24 hours ago, word emerged from a local TV station in Denver that a Boeing 737 passenger plane crashed at Denver International Airport.

As the report reached our overnight team in America, the reporter in charge (@RodrigoMx) issued the first bulletin, alerting our members that a 737 crashed in Denver, while quoting local television. Further information was not available at that point but the initial report was processed and reported as a bulletin on BreakingNewsOn in about one minute, proving once again that our team is able to gather, process and report breaking news from official, unofficial and media reports in record time. National media followed about 20 minutes later, with the Associated Press issuing a tiny story saying there had been an accident at the airport.

As the news spread on Twitter, with dozens of people re-posting our bulletins, it became clear the incident was not as big as initially thought. The plane veered of the runway as it tried to take off.

As of this posting, no fatalities have been reported but more than 50 people are injured as a result of the accident. Two women remain in critical condition.

The accident also resulted in the second best day on record for BNO’s BreakingNewsOn Twitter-service with just under 300 new members. The second day of our continuing breaking news coverage during the Mumbai terrorist attacks remains the “best” day when we look at the numbers.

A graphic of these numbers can be found below.

Articles about BreakingNewsOn’s breaking news coverage of the Denver plane crash:
Twitter’s Place in Breaking News
The reporter is dead! Long live the reporter!
Tweetip: Denver plane crash Twitter timeline
PR In A Jar: The power of Twitter

- Michael van Poppel (@mpoppel)

59 hours of continuing coverage + 10,000 and counting

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:11:00 -0500

Today, it’s exactly a week after the deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. More than 170 people died and hundreds were injured in a series of tragic events that caused outrage around the world and made headlines for several days.

It also introduced a lot of new people to Twitter as people provided live eyewitness accounts via the website but it also showed the strength and power of BNO News and its BreakingNewsOn Twitter service, again.

Last Wednesday, at 12.38 pm Eastern Time, BreakingNewsOn ran its first bulletin on the breaking story while quoting the British news channel Sky News who provided the first details seconds before.

Because of an extremely unlucky technical issue which happened in the hour before, BreakingNewsOn did not provide details sooner. India is among one of the international countries we have a close eye on and we monitor local media nearly 24/7.

Local media such as CNN-IBN had started covering the first reports 40 minutes before our Sky News sources bulletin. But at that time, the drama, panic and confusion was just starting to build up.

Other international media took several hours more to start covering the unfolding story from India. BNO News immediately provided continuing coverage as it became clear it was a major terrorist attack.

As the day went on, and as the news spread across the world, a record number of people joined BreakingNewsOn. On Wednesday (note that this is in the European timezone and includes about 6 hours of the initial coverage), a record number of 261 people joined.

As the events continued over the night and into its second day, BreakingNewsOn set its second record in as many days: 396 people joined, which is an all-time high according to our numbers.

On the third day, as the hostage crisis came to an end, 276 followed with 107 others joining during the aftermath on day 4.

BNO News provided continuing breaking news coverage over 59 hours. From minute one on Wednesday to the last second Friday night, without a single interruption.

BNO News brought you updates from local media, international media, news agencies and even BNO News sources in Mumbai. BNO News worked over the course of the events on a detailed casualty list which showed the number of dead, the injured and their nationalities for each local hospital. The list was updated several time.

BNO News also provided exclusive information from the Taj and Oberoi hotel management. Their staff shared up-to-the-minute details with our team about the situation inside the hotels and ruled out conflicting media reports.

BNO’s coverage on BreakingNewsOn also grabbed widespread attention among our current followers with hundreds of so-called “retweets” over the course of three days.

And it also shows how journalists are following the service. De Pers, a national newspaper in the Netherlands, showed live updates from BreakingNewsOn on its website during the first 6 hours of the Mumbai coverage. Also, De Tijd, a newspaper from Belgium, cited information directly from our Twitter coverage in their stories. The story also told its readers to follow BreakingNewsOn for the latest news from Mumbai.

And perhaps even better, during day 2 of the Mumbai coverage, we were able to welcome “@happyarts” as our 10,000th follower! A big milestone in the history of BreakingNewsOn as it continues to grow. The number of people joining BreakingNewsOn continues to soar with thousands of new members in the last two months. Welcome to all of you!

Overall, a very positive week for BNO News. Also, to everyone who donated over the recent days and weeks, thank you! Your support is extremely appreciated and our work for our new service (BNO News at www.bnonews.com) is already in process. However, we still need your support to continue doing this. Our team is putting so much time (and money) into this program, we still hope you will make a contribution at www.bnonews.com (you can donate by clicking on the banner). With your help, we can do this!

And for those interested, here is a graphic showing the daily amount of new people joining BreakingNewsOn on a daily base. The graphic shows the increase since 9/9 of this year and was last updated 1 hour ago as of this writing. What you can clearly see in the graphic is that the number of people who join on uneventful days, with little news, has continued to rise over the past few month.

Click to enlarge.

Now turning to another point. People who have followed BreakingNewsOn for a long time, at least from before the Mumbai terrorist attacks on Wednesday, have probably noticed the (breaking) news updates in “all-caps” saying “details soon”.

First, we have stopped doing it that way and have taken a new direction for these messages in all-caps. We are introducing three levels of “all-caps” alerts: “bulletin”, “urgent” and “flash”.

All-caps means breaking news which, to our our opinion, warrants an urgent update based on the preliminary information we have. The alert quickly sums up the breaking story with a text at the send saying either “(BULLETIN)”, “(URGENT)” or “(FLASH)”. I will explain what each level means shortly.

There are several reasons for this decision. First of all, it looks much more professional than what we have used until now. Also, readers can recognize the level of importance. We are also trying to bring back the number of “all caps” alerts we issue, to make them more unique.

The alert levels are pretty simple. A bulletin means its first word of (major) breaking news according to our (preliminary) information. And this is what a “BULLETIN” looks like:

An “urgent” update means its a significant update to a breaking, developing story (for example a high increase of a death toll). We haven’t “urgent” updates yet since we first introduced the bulletins, but we are starting to use them as of today. This is an “URGENT” example:

A “FLASH” would be a major breaking news update. An event that is either historic or something that happens only a few times a year at most. Think of a magnitude 8.5 earthquake, Barack Obama elected the first African American president or a terrorist attack in the United States. Events such as that would warrant a “FLASH” alert. To keep it simple: when you see a “FLASH” popping up from BreakingNewsOn, you know its a really big breaking news alert, something which will dominate the world headlines for days.

And final, this is a “FLASH” example:

Of course, all the alerts will be followed with a normal update within seconds to several minutes at most which provides additional details or some more background.

I hope you enjoyed reading this BNO News Blog update. Feel free to comment and we’ll read them and perhaps response to them as soon as possible.

You can also contact me by email at mpoppel@bnonews.com.

- Michael

P.S. You can now follow me on Twitter: @mpoppel.

BNO News beats New York 911 call

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:36:00 -0500

While it may look simple from the outside, behind those lines on our Twitter news service, there is a major newsgathering operation ongoing 24/7.

Of course, the newsgathering operation which we are currently setting up is mainly intended for our future online breaking news service at www.bnonews.com. However, it already gives us the opportunity to report breaking news on our Twitter service before anyone else can. Our newsgathering operations include monitoring literally thousands of local, national and international news outlets, contacting (emergency) officials, witnesses and monitoring official statements (press releases etc.) from all sorts of agencies (you sometimes see some of the press releases on a bnonews.com link which we post on Twitter).

Today, however, we had another great example to show the speed of our newsgathering, not only on important stories but also on local stories when emergency responders are still en-route to the accident.

Earlier today, we posted several updates on BreakingNewsOn regarding a bus crash in the Bronx, New York. It happened at the intersection of Conner Street and the New England Thruway.

As we received word from one of our sources, which said there had been a major bus crash involving two passenger busses carrying a total of around 100 people, we immediately went looking for official confirmation. Note that we only post breaking news updates from sources we consider reliable.

Our first call went to the nearest fire station, which was located near the site of the crash. We spoke with the person in charge at the fire station who told us they were not aware of any bus accident at that location, or at any other location for that matter. As the phone conversation continued and was about to end, sirens were heard in the background and the person at the other end of the line said they just received a call and were now going to respond to the double bus crash.

And although the initial reports indicated a major incident with many injuries, it turned out to be (much) less important. When we last checked, there were only 10 people with minor injuries. A colleague at a national news outlet informed us their sources said there were 9 injuries.

BNO News was working on this story even before emergency services were dispatched to the accident.

We, at BNO News, put a lot of work, time and money in both our forthcoming breaking news service as well as our Twitter news service (www.twitter.com/BreakingNewsOn) and we hope you will support us by contributing to us at www.bnonews.com (and click on the donation banner).

Also, looking back at election day, nearly 700 people subscribed to BreakingNewsOn and vote08 (www.twitter.com/vote08) to follow our in-depth coverage of the historic events that took place. And to give some more insight, our servers processed some 9,000 emails on election day, more than 4,000 visitors who followed our live election blog at bnonews.com and we were the first news source to provide Barack Obama’s victory speech (before he read it) and provided the first comments from US President Bush. And as our more people are turning to BreakingNewsOn, we are now approaching a total of 9,000 followers on Twitter, while we reached our 8,000th follower only two weeks ago.

Again, we hope you enjoy our services and hope you will contribute to help us continue our efforts, because we really need your help!

Thank you, and thank you for following us.

PAKISTANI EARTHQUAKE: Comparing BNO News to other outlets

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:27:00 -0500

Last Wednesday, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 struck near Quetta, Pakistan and hundreds of people died. BNO News brought the news before any other major news outlet, even before local media. This post will show more insight in the speed of BNO News versus other news agencies, as observed by us. Do you know a news agency which reported it earlier? Please let us know. All times mentioned are in Eastern time.

7:09:57 pm: Magnitude 6.4 earthquake strikes 43 miles from Quetta, Pakistan. (time of earthquake)
7.22 pm: The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is reporting a 6.5 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan.
7.23 pm: "MAJOR EARTHQUAKE HITS PAKISTAN. DETAILS SOON.", BNO News reports (through BreakingNewsOn).
7.24 pm: "PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER REPORTS EARTHQUAKE WITH PRELIMINARY 6.5 MAGNITUDE HITS NEAR QUETTA, PAKISTAN. DETAILS SOON.", BNO News reports.
7.25 pm: The United States Geological Survey is reporting a magnitude 6.2 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan.
7.25 pm: Local television in Pakistan, as observed by BNO News, is still not reporting the earthquake. They are, however, reporting an earlier moderate earthquake in Pakistan which struck the hour before.
7.29 pm: "A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 has struck 43 miles from Quetta, Pakistan; no word on damage or casualties - USGS.", BNO News reports.
7.29 pm: "QUETTA: LARGE TREMOR JOLTS THE CITY", a news alert reads on a Pakistani english language news channel called Dawn News.
7.30 pm: "A large tremor has "jolted" the Pakistani city of Quetta, according to local television reports; no word on damage," BNO News reports.
7.42 pm: "EARTHQUAKE OF 6.2 MAGNITUDE HITS PAKISTAN, 70 KM NORTHEAST OF QUETTA - USGS (BULLETIN)", a breaking news report on the Reuters news wire reads.
7.46 pm: "REUTERS: AN EARTHQUAKE OF 6.2 MAGNITUDE HITS 70KM NORTHEAST OF QUETTA IN PAKISTAN", the British 24-hour news channel Sky News is reporting in a breaking news ticker on screen.
7.46 pm: Dawn News TV in Pakistan is reporting there are no immediate reports of damage or casualties from this earthquake.
7.48 pm: "No immediate reports of damage or casualties after major earthquake jolts Pakistan, government sources tell Dawn News TV," BNO News reports.
7.56 pm: "ISLAMABAD: MAGNITUDE OF EARTHQUAKE WAS 6.2 - U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY", a news alert in the news ticker of Dawn News TV reads.
7.58 pm: The Reuters news agency runs its first story on the earthquake which says there was no damage immediately reported.
8.10pm: BBC World News is reporting, as breaking news, that a magnitude 6.2 earthquake has struck Pakistan.
8.13 pm: "Reports of damage, multiple injuries after magnitude 6.2 earthquake jolts Quetta, Pakistan - local television", BNO News reports.
8.21 pm: "INJURIES, NUMEROUS HOMES COLLAPSE AFTER MAJOR EARTHQUAKE JOLTS PAKISTAN. DETAILS SOON.", BNO News reports.
8.24 pm: CNN International interrupts its program and is reporting the earthquake in Pakistan as breaking news (while first official word emerged 1 hour ago). Their report also says there is no damage.
8.30 pm: "At least 15 people injured, "many" homes collapse after magnitude 6.2 to 6.5 earthquake jolts Pakistani city of Queeta - local media.", BNO News reports per several media outlets in Pakistan.
8.37 pm: "Homes have reportedly collapsed in Pakistan's Ziarat District near Quetta; fatalities feared, officials tell local television.", BNO News reports per several Pakistani media outlets.
8.43 pm: "At least one person killed, up to 15 injured after major earthquake brings down homes in Pakistan," BNO News reports.
9.25 pm: "USGS revises Pakistani earthquake magnitude to 6.4; Reuters news agency reporting at least 4 dead, 15 injured," BNO News reports.
9.49 pm: "Six killed in Pakistani earthquake; 40 injured," the Reuters news agency is reporting.
9.56 pm: "Death toll from Pakistani earthquake rises to at least 14 with 16 critically injured, according to a local newspaper," BNO News reports.
10.15 pm: CNN International, while broadcasting live programming from its sister network CNN USA, replaces its news ticker by a yellow breaking news ticker to update on the earthquake. CNN International is now reporting 15 dead.
10.29 pm: "Government officials tell the Reuters news agency that the death toll from Pakistan's 6.4 magnitude earthquake has risen to at least 27.," BNO News.
10.35 pm: "The death toll of Balochistan quake has reached to 32 on Wednesday," the website of a local newspaper reads.
10.41 pm: Three hours and 20 minutes after an official tsunami warning center, followed later by a major international earthquake center, put out word that a major earthquake had struck Pakistan, the Associated Press is issuing a so-called "APNewsAlert" (breaking news bulletin). It reads: "Official says a 6.1 earthquake has shaken southwestern Pakistan, no word on damage." Note that major news agencies were already reporting deaths and major damage.
10.46 pm: Five minutes after its initial alert, a second APNewsAlert follows, with some more accurate details: "A local official says 16 have been killed in a strong earthquake in Southwest Pakistan".
As the evening continued, the death toll continued to rise and it became clear many people had lost their lives in this earthquake. While, in the end, international media led in bringing details of the destruction, they failed to report it as soon as possible. After BNO News (who brought the earthquake report within a minute after it was released by an earthquake center), Reuters did a good job in bringing the news. The Associated Press had a major failure as it took them 3 hours and 20 minutes to alert its members to a significant earthquake which in the end killed up hundreds.

Introduction and stats for the last week

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:05:00 -0400

Welcome! The BNO News Blog will from now on provide an in-depth look behind the “BreakingNewsOn” service. As you are probably aware, the people behind the Twitter service have been working on a new service called “BNO News” for some time now. As we continue to work on our forthcoming service, the BNO News Blog will tell you what we are working on. In the coming weeks, we will lay out our plans, tell more about ourselves and share ideas we have on our mind.

Why? Because we want to hear from you. We want to know what you think about our current Twitter service and hope to hear what you wish to see from our new service. Got something on your mind? Ideas? Complaints? Suggestions? Tips? Or do you just want to let us know what you like about us? Feel free to post your comments to our blog posts and we’ll read them. We may even discuss it in one of our future updates.

BreakingNewsOn is all about breaking news and BNO News will continue to carry on this spirit as well as offer much more options to serve you even better.

Whether you are new or old to our service, BreakingNewsOn has proven its credibility during the last 12 months, breaking hundreds of major international stories before any other news source. If you pay close attention to our reports and compare them with other major news sources, you will see that our service is not just ahead by minutes, even hours is some cases. We’ll go into much more detail on this subject in one of our next post, we will also provide a “behind the scenes” look into our exclusive newsgathering operation.

We also plan to provide daily or weekly updates as to our followers increase on Twitter, discuss comments on this blog, and much more.

BNO News/BreakingNewsOn is not funded in any way and for this reason we hope you will consider donating to our service. We need your support to continue our work and help us serve you in the best way possible. If you consider donating, please visit www.bnonews.com and click on the banner.

Twitter stats
As of this post, our BreakingNewsOn service has a total of 8,173 followers. And as we continue to update this blog, we will provide statistics relating to our service on a frequent base. Not only will we provide updates on the followers increase (and others), we will also compare our reporting to other news services.

Since last Tuesday, BreakingNewsOn gained a total of 730 new followers (until midnight European time). While there is a usual increase of about 50 people a day, busy news days do best for the service. When looking at the last 7 days, about 150 people subscribed to BreakingNewsOn after initial reports emerged that gunmen had opened fire at the Western Kentucky University campus. Fortunately, no one was killed and nothing really bad happened in the end. But as the initial word spread, many people turned to our service to find the latest details and dozens of people “retweeted” our reports.

More than 100 people also joined our news service last Sunday when US troops raided a farm in Syria. It was the second best day of the week.

The following stats will put the last 8 days in more graphics. The blue line, as explained in the picture, is BreakingNewsOn. You can also find statistics for other BNO News Twitter accounts, which you may not be aware of. These other services, LivePressAlert, StockAlert and LHCLatest have been inactive for a while now but we intend to re-activate them when conditions warrant.

This concludes our first post. BNO News is currently preparing for the elections next week and we will introduce some new and temporary new services to cover this historic event.

Meanwhile, add this site to your RSS reader and follow our new Twitter account @BNONews on where we will post links to new blog posts and update on developments.