Last month, Microsoft rolled out a new MSN homepage, coinciding with the renaming of its Bing apps on Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 under the MSN brand. Some believe the MSN brand to have fallen into obscurity over the years but, believe it or not, MSN.com still enjoys more than 425 million visitors every month.
That"s a pretty big audience by any standards, and it"s one that Twitter is eager to tap into.
To that end, Microsoft and Twitter have teamed up in a mutually beneficial collaboration - one that will allow Twitter to connect with that massive audience, and which will also enable Microsoft to bring the latest breaking news to its users faster than ever before.
The new homepage now features a breaking news banner that displays tweets from trusted news sources from around the world, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sky News, Le Monde, NDTV, The Guardian, AOL and many more. Additionally, the banner may also display information from other relevant news sources, including official accounts of governments and organizations, spokespersons, celebrities or eyewitnesses to a breaking news event.
A Microsoft representative told us that the breaking news banner will be used selectively, and will only be put into action when there is a major news event "spiking" in activity on Twitter.
Source and image: Twitter