MSN's new web design features breaking news Tweets
MSN sees over 425 million visitors each month, many of whom come to get the news from some of the world's most authoritative news organizations. And as the go-to platform for breaking news, legions of journalists and eyewitnesses turn …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft only relaunched the new MSN website on September 30, 2014 alongside rebranded Bing apps, so this announcement from The Twitter Blog nine days later is a fast follow: the redesigned portal now surfaces breaking news Tweets to what Microsoft puts at over 425 million monthly visitors.
It extends a decade-long pattern rather than starting one — MSNBC bought Newsvine in 2007 to pull eyewitness reporting into msnbc.com, and MSN launched msnNOW across Facebook, web and mobile in 2012 to chase social trends. Notably, an MSN Tech and Gadgets column argued back in May 2007 that nobody cared what friends were doing minute to minute; the 2014 design treats exactly that minute-by-minute stream as front-page inventory.
First-order effects
- Journalists and eyewitnesses posting breaking news on Twitter get direct distribution to MSN's 425-million-visitor audience without leaving their existing workflow.
- MSN's editors shift from hand-selecting headlines to curating a real-time feed sourced from Twitter, making the Tweet stream part of the homepage product itself.
Second-order effects
- Rival portal operators face pressure to strike equivalent real-time partnerships, since 'authoritative sources plus eyewitness Tweets' becomes the baseline homepage offering rather than a differentiator.
- News organizations gain a new referral channel through MSN's redesign, but cede some control of how their breaking coverage is framed when Tweets sit alongside — or above — their own stories.
Third-order effects
- Portals are consolidating around whichever real-time data streams they can license, turning access to platforms like Twitter's feed into a distribution control point for consumer news gateways — a dependency that cuts both ways if either side renegotiates terms.
The trend: Web portals are repositioning from edited link directories into real-time social syndication layers, with licensed breaking-news streams as the competitive currency.