MSNBC.com and BermanBraun has launched a new political website called BLTWY. BLTWY is named after “Beltway” which may have something to do with the road that is around D.C. BLTWY is a mash-up between celebrity news and politics. [AllThingsD]

In late November MSNBC announced that they are syndicating content from the BreakingNews Twitter account. The BreakingNews account has about 1.4 million followers on Twitter and MSNBC has decided to buy the domain name BreakingNews.com to complement the real-time news source.

MSNBC bought the domain name from PV Media Group. “Hard and fast breaking news is currently an underserved market. With www.breakingnews.com we can now provide the optimal solution,” stated Charles Tillinghast, the President of the MSNBC Digital Network.

BNO News (also known as @BreakingNews on Twitter) has over 1.4 million followers. The company also has a very popular iPhone application and has decided to start syndicating content from sources for their Twitter followers. One of their first partners is MSNBC.com. While MSNBC.com manages and syndicates content to the Twitter account, BNO News founder Michael van Poppel will focus on building a subscription based news wire service.

The news wire service will begin in January. While MSNBC.com will have access to the Twitter account, it will not have access to the iPhone app data of BNO News. MSNBC’s own breaking news account has only 40,000 followers. MSNBC.com will probably link to news articles on their own website through the BNO Twitter feed and gain additional traffic that way.

EveryBlock is a local news website that aggregates content news from various local sources.  For example, in the Detroit section of EveryBlock, the website has links to content created by The Detroit News, local news blogs, WXYZ-TV, MyFOX Detroit, etc.

EveryBlock has been acquired by MSNBC.com today, but will continue to operate as an independent brand.  The financial details were undisclosed.

“EveryBlock’s talented team has a track record of innovation in the industry, and we’re excited to add them to the msnbc.com brand family,” stated MSNBC.com President Charlie Tillinghast. “They’ve broken new ground with their unique approach to collecting, organizing and presenting news down to the block level. Their impact and importance in the community space is extremely valuable and carries promise for journalism and new business models.”

Some of the cities that EveryBlock has covered includes Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and Washington, D.C.  The website also is in the process of adding news by zip codes.

EveryBlock was started about two years ago in Chicago, Illinois.  The company has been funded by the Knight Foundation.  This past June, their grant with the Knight Foundation expired and so the five employees have been talking to investors ever since.

[via NYT]

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC reported that Twitter is the “worst person in the world.” Apparently someone created a fake account of Olbermann and was able to fool 14,000 followers. Olbermann signed up for an account last year and then decided against using it. Twitter won’t be suspending the fake account so beware if you are following the fake Olbermann.

[via HuffPo]