A little more than a month ago msnbc announced plans to take over the @breakingnews Twitter handle, a news feed of breaking news tidbits with a whopping 1.5 million followers. Today, the msnbc Digital Network -- which is based in Redmond -- took the deal a little further with the purchase of the domain www.breakingnews.com. In a release, msnbc said that the acquisition will help it target "breaking news loyalists."

“We know that people want news in different ways in varying circumstances,” said Charlie Tillinghast, president of the msnbc Digital Network in a statement. “Not everyone wants news surrounded by commentary or features. Our goal as a news organization is to provide the most relevant experiences to satisfy distinct needs. Hard and fast breaking news is currently an underserved market."

The BreakingNews handle on Twitter was created by a Dutch teenager by the name of Michael van Poppel, whose rise to power Read Write Web covered last summer. (Editor's note: Post has been updated to reflect what was sold.) Shortly thereafter paidContent.org's Rafat Ali went so far as to suggest that some media company should buy the Twitter headline news service.

The kid from Netherlands is hands down eating everyone’s lunch when it comes to pushing out breaking news first, bar none. He and his team’s news judgment on what’s-really-important is impeccable. The nascent service has a lot more Twitter subscribers than almost all big news media companies, except maybe CNN and NYTimes.

Looks like msnbc -- which also recently purchased the hyerplocal service EveryBlock -- took Ali's advice.

The purchase price of the BreakingNews domain was not disclosed. A spokeswoman for msnbc said that the transaction was separate from the earlier Twitter agreement, and that plans for monetization and integration of the domain will be shared in the future.

UPDATE: More from Msnbc.com, which noes that van Poppel played no role in the sale of the BreakingNews.com domain and it had previously been owned by New York-based PV Media Group. Alan Boyle's report has more on where Msnbc.com plans to take the brand. He writes:

For now, the BreakingNews.com Web site provides nothing more than an updated feed of @BreakingNews' Twitter alerts and Web links. "It essentially is a Twitter feed for people who don't use Twitter," Tillinghast said. But the site is likely to evolve into a service that also provides news stories and minute-by-minute updates on developing stories. Tillinghast said such features would differentiate the Web site from the Twitter feed, where "you have to regulate how many dispatches you send out" to avoid overwhelming followers.

John Cook is co-founder of TechFlash. Follow on Twitter @johnhcook.