Plurk, a micro-blogging service popular in parts of Asia, claimed today that its site design and underlying code were copied by a recently debuted service from Microsoft Corp.'s China division.
MSN Juku made its beta debut in China earlier this month as a way for users to post 140-character messages on a scrolling timeline interface.
According to Microsoft, MSN Juku is a "local innovation developed by MSN China...based on Windows Live Messenger networks."
At the time, local Chinese media were already commenting on the similarities in the look-and-feel between MSN Juku and Plurk, with one calling it a "bandit" version (Chinese slang for a knock-off).
That accusation was brought out into the open today by Plurk. In a blog post, the company said that while "imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but blatant theft of code, design, and UI elements is just not cool, especially when the infringing party is the biggest software company in the world."
Plurk showed purported screenshots of MSN China's new service, which it called "a little overly inspired" by Plurk's 18-month-old service. It also showed snippets of JavaScript and CSS code from both services, and claimed that 80% of the codebase "appears to be stolen directly from Plurk."
Plurk said the two services are so similar that some bloggers speculated that Microsoft's service might have been based on a partnership with Plurk, a rumor it quickly dismissed.
"We were never contacted by any party at M$ to collaborate on such a venture nor did we give any prior written or verbal permission to anyone on their side to take our code, take our CSS, and copy the essence and ethos of our service," wrote Plurk. "As a young startup, we're stunned, shocked, and unsure what to do next and need your support and suggestions."
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to a separate interview with Plurk's co-founder published on Monday, the 9-employee company is scattered across the world, though incorporated in Canada.
Plurk has largely failed to make a dent in the English-speaking Web, where Twitter dominates. It had 766,000 visitors last month, compared to 1.3 million for Friendfeed and 131 million for Twitter, according to statistics from Compete.com.
Plurk is also banned in China, along with Twitter and some other social-networking services, by the government for political reasons.
Source:
http://www.itnews.com/internet-based-applications-and-services/11943/twitter-rival-plurk-claims-ui-code-ripped-microsoft-c
Web Site Design
love to see this discussion! It’s great to see you all working through the issues and also, it’s great to see recommendations for testing. In the end, it’s what your actual users do and prefer that should be your biggest driver in making these decision.
ReplyDeleteIT Provider