Van Poppel ran a popular Twitter-based news service called BreakingNewsOn from May 13, 2007 until December 1, 2009, at which time it had nearly 1.5 million followers. The service is best known for acquiring and selling an authentic Osama bin Laden video to Reuters in September 2007[1] It also scooped the regular news organizations with its live accounts of the 2008 Lincolnshire earthquake in February 2008.[2] The Twitter account was eventually acquired by MSNBC.com.