Back in November 2008, we brought you news of BreakingNewsOn, a Twitter-based news alert service known for breaking news before mainstream channels (it famously once broke news of a bus crash even before the emergency services were dispatched) that was facing closure unless it could find the funds to keep going. Two months on, it seems a model has emerged, as TechCrunch reports. Robin Wauters writes:

“The reason BreakingNewsOn is moving away from Twitter in favor of a separate website with live updates from news events from across the globe, is as simple as it is obvious: the free service could never be monetized the way Twitter works right now. BNO News will have separate RSS feeds and e-mail alerts. It intends to also process user-submitted news items in true citizen journalism fashion and is thinking of adding some features especially designed to cater to professional journalists and raw news junkies.“

Elsewhere on the web
Stan Schroeder at Mashable is thoroughly confused as to why MySpace, Yahoo and Intel want people to use their favourite social network via a TV. Quite damningly he says: “This is a try to squeeze some life out of a notoriously non-interactive medium like the television, and – like all similar initiatives before it – it will end up nowhere. In the meantime the rest of us will enjoy social networks on our computers, handhelds, netbooks or mobiles.” Commenting on the story, Robert Andrews at paidContent thinks the Mashable guys underestimate just how explosive the socialisation of TV will be. Watch this space.

Earlier this week we mentioned WhosTalkin, a new social media search engine which allows you to search a collection of popular blogs and microblogging platforms, news aggregators, networks, video services, images, forums, and social bookmarking and tagging services. Rick Turoczy at ReadWriteWeb has reviewed WhosTalkin and found that while it takes the paradigm of social media search one step further, it’s still too limited to properly track the very fluid and dynamic world of social media.

Adam Ostrow at Mashable is thoroughly impressed by Dan Zarella, social and viral marketing scientist, who responded to an earlier Mashable post envisioning the way Twitter will change blog design in the year ahead with Tweetbacks. Similar to Trackbacks, Tweetbacks tracks tweets that link to a specific blog post, automagically pulling all related tweets and re-tweets back into the originating post. Twitter CEO Evan Williams was equally excited; it’s a feature they’d been planning as well. Go Dan!