Microsoft China Blatantly Rips Off Microblogging Service Plurk

Microblogging startup Plurk may not have become hugely popular in these parts, where Twitter rules the lands, but it has been making strides in Asia. Recently, the fledgling company has gotten a feared competitor in the space with the launch of MSN Juku in China by the local Microsoft subsidiary, in a country where Plurk has notably been blocked since April this year. But the software giant may well have cut a few corners here and there to get their service up and running, and has seemingly turned to outright theft of code and design elements of Plurk to launch in a hurry. The design of MSN Juku sure has the same looks as Plurk, as you can tell from the screenshots below. But according to a blog post by the microblogging startup, there's more going on that just design inspiration: