Asia’s number one microblogging service is crying foul at Microsoft, who has apparently helped themselves to the look & feel of their service.

That’s the word from the official Plurk blog. Plurk is the numero uno microblogging service in all of Asia, and based on the screenshots below from their blog this week, it appears that Microsoft China has some explaining to do.



Apparently, Microsoft China launched their own official service in November of this year. Called MSN Juku/Hompy/Mclub (?!), the design and user interface of the service is a near exact copy of Plurk’s, right down to the left-right timeline scrolling navigation system they use. Plurk is also claiming that nearly 80% of the code used by Microsoft China is straight from their service as well.

Of course, piracy and China go together like peanut butter & jelly. Movies, television shows, music and software from America are widely pirated in China, where officially licensed product can be a hard sell. If Plurk’s claims are true, this would be one of the rare occasions where an American company turned the tables on the Chinese!

As the Plurk blog points out, it’s rather an ironic situation: “All the more ironic considering Microsoft has often been leading the charge on fighting for stronger IP (intellectual property) laws and combating software piracy in China.”

It goes without saying that Plurk was never approached by Microsoft China, nor did they collaborate with them. Plurk is a young, upstart company with millions of loyal users, and their blog is making a very vocal plea to those users to help put a stop to Microsoft’s dastardly folly. This will be one to watch!