Software giant Microsoft pulled a microsite in China after a competitor with the unlikely name of Plurk complained the Juku service plagiarized its code and its content.
MSN Juku was introduced in early December and has the characteristics of a Twitter, in that it lets people post messages not longer than 140 characters wrong.
But, according to Plurk, Juku looked exactly like its own microblogging service, from look and feel to the type of content and help systems used.
Plurk said late yesterday that while imitation is a sincere form of flattery it was a little dumbfounded that the biggest software company in the world would do such a thing.
Plurk is a Canadian company so it would be no more than a hop, skip and a jump to knock on Microsoft’s door in Redmond, WA. So far Twitter hasn’t uttered a tweet.
