December 17th, 2009

Plurk Still Considers Suing Microsoft Over Copy-Paste Debacle In China

Microblogging startup Plurk took note of Microsoft’s apology, in which the software company took responsibility over the blatant rip-off of the startup’s design and code for a competing service in China.

Microsoft was quick to blame a third-party vendor for cutting a few corners here and there when developing the beta service (MSN Juku), and promptly yanked it off the Web.

But as far as Plurk’s concerned, that’s not where the story ends. → Read More

December 15th, 2009

Microsoft Gives Final Answer On Plurk Disaster: It Wasn't Us

About 24 hours ago news broke that Microsoft China appeared to rip off both the look and feel as well as much of the code of a microblogging service called Plurk. Last night they issued a statement saying they took the Juku site down, and suggested an outside contractor was to blame.

Today they issued a final statement on the matter. This boils down to “it wasn’t us, it was our vendor.” But they do take responsibility, and apologize to Plurk. The apology is nice but largely unnecessary. As we said yesterday, this is the best thing to ever happen to the startup.

Microsoft’s statement: → Read More

December 14th, 2009

Microsoft Has No Answer To China Plurk Debacle

Early this morning we wrote about what appears to be a blatant rip off of Plurk by Microsoft China. Microsoft’s Juku product looks almost exactly like Plurk, and the code appears to almost identical.

Now, more than twelve hours later, Microsoft still has no real response to the situation. It was the middle of the night in China when the story broke, and Microsoft says that they are just now working with their team there to “track down the information.” In the meantime, Juku is being taken down: → Read More

December 14th, 2009

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: → Read More

May 4th, 2009

Plurk Adds Real-Time Search. Doesn't Mention Twitter.

Plurk, a micro-messaging service similar to Twitter, today added a nice new feature: Real-time conversation search. As you might expect, it allows you to search Plurk’s growing index of data to find out what people are saying about a topic right now. In its post on the matter, Plurk goes into how it thinks this is the next phase of search beyond the traditional search engines, and how social search could revolutionize things. Of course, it fails to mention its number one competitor in the field: Twitter.

Plurk, which launched about a year ago, differentiates itself from Twitter mainly in its look and feel. It emphasizes a horizontal scrolling timeline rather than a vertical one. Plurk also gives users set verbs to use for their updates, such as, “parislemon LOVES real-time search.” That’s all well and good, but Twitter still has the users — a lot more of them. Plurk notes that it’s been growing every day since its launch, and is close to seeing its 1 billionth aggregate responses, but that is nothing compared to the company it won’t mention in its post. → Read More

April 23rd, 2009

China Blocks Micro-Messaging Site Plurk. Is Twitter Next?

As micro-messaging spreads overseas, the threat of censorship looms in certain parts of the world. Yesterday Plurk, a micro-messaging service that competes with Twitter, discovered that it is being blocked in China. According to Plurk’s lead developer Amir Salihefendic, “We at Plurk still don’t know why we are banned and we did not get any warnings from the Chinese government or have been in contact with them.” But a quick test confirms that the site is not available in China. → Read More

Real-Time
Crunchbase

Energy Points — Received $3M in Series A funding from Plan B Ventures
2.13.2012
Rusnano — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Plan B Ventures — Invested in Energy Points.
2.13.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
2.1.2012
2.9.2012
LetsBuy.com — Acquired by Flipkart.
2.9.2012
Cocoafish — Acquired by Appcelerator.
2.9.2012
Energy Points — Received $3M in Series A funding from Plan B Ventures
2.13.2012
StopTheHacker — Received $1.1M in Series A funding from Runa Capital
2.13.2012
Marin Software — Received $30M in Unattributed funding
2.13.2012
FNZ — Received Unattributed funding from General Atlantic
2.13.2012
LipoFIT Analytic — Received $9.5M in Series B funding from KfW Bankengruppe and Bayern Kapital
2.13.2012
Plan B Ventures — Invested in Energy Points.
2.13.2012
Runa Capital — Invested in StopTheHacker.
2.13.2012
General Atlantic — Invested in FNZ.
2.13.2012
Bayern Kapital — Invested in LipoFIT Analytic.
2.13.2012
2.13.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Rusnano — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Durham Graphene Science — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
ClevrU — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
OpenLabel — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Bookt — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Fit Freeway — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
2.12.2012
Metier HR - Cloud Based HR Process Automation Suite — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
TweepsMap — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Wupbox account — Product added to CrunchBase
2.11.2012
CrunchBase