By Eric Lai

ComputerWorld

December 15, 2009

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‘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.

Screenshots. The Plurk page layout and user interface compared with MSN China’s new microblogging service, as posted on Plurk’s blog.

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 nine-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.

However, Plurk reportedly tops the microblog market in Taiwan, ahead of Twitter. It is also popular in other Asian countries such as Indonesia and Singapore. One reason: Twitter, due to cost and time, only operates a fully localized service in Asia for Japanese users. Plurk, meanwhile, solicits help from volunteers in each country to help translate key commands and phrases, with the best chosen by a vote in that country. That allows Plurk to offer its service in 33 languages, including Chinese, Gaelic, Arabic and Japanese.

By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service
December 11, 2009

Plurk, a microblogging rival to Twitter, is winning over markets in Asia by offering service in local languages, something global leader Twitter has struggled to do even in European languages.

Plurk’s user interface and microblog posts are available in a range of tongues, from English to the languages of some of the fastest growing countries in the world, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Hindi (India) and Chinese.

“When Plurk first launched, we had a translation system where the whole system was translated into 25 different languages in two weeks, and it’s all done by our users,” said Alvin Woon, a cofounder of Plurk, in an interview.

Plurk sends out an e-mail with a new string of English to volunteer translators and they localize it then send it back. Head translators lead teams of users, and they vote for the best language usage when they run into unusual English slang or a new phrase. Many translators come from the open-source community and are willing to work without pay, Woon said. They also have a strong desire to localize a microblogging site into their own language.

So far, Plurk is offered in 33 languages, but a total of 45 different languages are being translated as of this writing. The list of writing systems is as impressive for its range as it is for difficulty. Arabic, for one, is available on Plurk, as well as Hebrew, Greek, Japanese and both forms of Chinese characters, traditional and simplified. The more obscure offerings include Irish (Gaeilge) and Catalan for people in Spain.

Twitter is available in five languages currently: English, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese. And although it’s behind in the language race, the pace Twitter is adding new ones appears to have sped up. Twitter opened for Italian Dec. 10, just a few weeks after adding French on Nov. 19 and Spanish on Nov. 2, according to the company’s blog.

Twitter did not return requests for comment on its language strategy.

One of the cofounders of Twitter, Biz Stone, told reporters in Japan last month that it’s very hard to localize in Asian languages, which is the reason his company is focusing only on Japanese now.

Plurk hasn’t found localization such a challenge. The Canadian company employs only nine people, including three cofounders, without a single translator, says Woon.

“I’ve been surprised at how many people want to translate Plurk into their own language,” Woon said. Their only reward, aside from Plurk in their own language, is a virtual Rosetta Stone badge they can put on their Plurk user profile.

The importance of localization can be seen in parts of Asia where English is not commonly used. Plurk is already the number one microblogging site in Taiwan, according to market researcher InsightXplorer, and is popular in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and Malaysia, because people are able to use local languages.

Twitter continues to dominate markets in Asia where English is common. The microblogging service ranks first in Hong Kong and Singapore, with Plurk trailing in both places, according to data provided by Internet researcher Hitwise.

Globally, Plurk remains far behind Twitter, according to data ranking Web sites by traffic from Alexa.com. Twitter is number 14 globally, behind giants such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Plurk comes in at 1,073 on the list.

Plurk’s largest audience is in Taiwan, according to Internet research firm Alexa.com, followed by Indonesia and the US Twitter’s main audience is from the US, followed by India, Germany and the UK.

By Daniel Ionescu
October 29, 2009

Twitter is warning users of a new phishing scam spreading through direct messages on the network, which redirect users to a fake log-in page to steal their passwords.

Through its Spam Watch account, Twitter warned: “We’ve seen a few phishing attempts today (Wednesday); if you’ve received a strange (direct message), and it takes you to a Twitter log-in page, don’t do it!”

The phishing direct messages take the form of: “hi. this you on here? http://blogger.djh****.com” (Part of the hyperlink removed for security). The site that this hyperlink redirects recipients to is designed to grab your Twitter username and password as soon as they are entered.

After one’s Twitter login credentials are entered into the phishing site, the page redirects to a fake “Twitter over capacity page,” with the famous Twitter Fail Whale. This is not a genuine Twitter page.

Security firm Sophos advises users that fell for the phishing scam to immediately change their Twitter passwords and also any other sites where the same log-in credentials are used.

Sophos say on their blog that “hackers like to comandeer poorly protected PCs to form a botnet from which they can send spam campaigns or spread malware, and in the same way they are after compromised social networking accounts.”

As long as you do not click on the link from this direct message, you should be safe from the phishing attack. It is recommended that you delete any similar messages as soon as you receive them.