Taiwan police ask Plurk for IP addresses of users

April 9, 2010 By

Microblogging service Plurk has been pretty successful outside the U.S, but having already been the victim of a ban in China (followed by MSN China cloning the site with their own product), the service has now been asked by Taiwan police to provide the IP addresses of some Plurk users, without being supplied with a court order by police.

As reported on Global Voices, Alvin Woon, one of the founders of Plurk, posted a message saying he’d been asked by police for the information.

Unless a court deems it necessary, what the police are asking is technically illegal. But it turns out that it appears to be usual practice for the police, who have confirmed that they would make around 10 such requests to Plurk every month. Since Woon is not located in Taiwan, and the Plurk servers are in America, he hasn’t complied with the request.

But obviously Plurk isn’t the only website being asked for user details and IP addresses, and other companies are being more cooperative with police enquiries. Given current laws being proposed and implemented in the UK, U.S and Australia, along with the approach of China to internet freedom, it’s more important than ever to have an understanding of your rights, your privacy, and the attititude of any social network/blog/hosting company/ISP that you use. One book I’d recommend for a greater understanding of the nature of law on the internet and how it can be changed by Governments would be Code: Version 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig

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Did Microsoft China copy and clone Plurk?

December 14, 2009 By

Is Microsoft China’s MSN Juku a straight theft of code and design from Plurk, the microblogging service which has had major success in the Asian world?

Despite fading after initial interest in the West, Plurk now claims to be ten times bigger than Twitter in Taiwan alone, and the preferred method of microblogging in many Asian countries, despite access to the site being banned by China in April 2009. At the time, Plurk’s top five countries were Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines, the U.S and China, so it was a big issue.

Now the issue has got even bigger, as described in a blog post by Plurk co-founder and lead developer, Amir, which states what they think has happened:

  • Microsoft China officially launched its own microblogging service, MSN Juku/Hompy/Mclub, some time in November, 2009.
  • The service’s design and UI is by and large an EXACT copy of Plurk’s innovative left-right timeline scrolling navigation system.
  • Some 80% of the client and product codebase appears to be stolen directly from Plurk!
  • Plurk was never approached nor collaborated in any capacity with MS on this service.
  • As a young startup, we’re stunned, shocked, and unsure what to do next and need your support and suggestions.

And judging by the images and code displayed on the Plurk blog, it seems far too suspicious to be a mere coincidence.

Spot the difference:

image

And again…

image

And once more with feeling:

image

It’s pretty amazing that a company of the size of Microsoft China would even think about stealing code to power a new launch, and that it’s gone this far if so. The only logical reason could be that China’s internet laws and lack of access to the outside world could lead to people thinking no-one would notice.

The question the Plurk team is asking is how to tackle the problem?

My guess is that the bad publicity wouldn’t necessarily worry Microsoft China, but might worry Microsoft itself a little more, particularly given all the efforts to fight Chinese piracy and protect intellectual property that Microsoft has supported. It’s a big harder to do that when you’ve got a clone of a reasonably well-established and successful company sitting there for all to see.

Techcrunch has also covered the story, and I’m looking forward to seeing what, if any, response they get from Microsoft.

My guess will be that MSN Juku will go quiet for a while, before perhaps reappearing with a slightly more unique codebase and design. If not, perhaps the only other option will be for Microsoft to get into acquisition mode – something that didn’t work out well for Google and Jaiku, and isn’t likely to work when the starting point is a complete rip-off!

Update: The outcome is that yes it’s a clone, but apparently done by a third party developer when everyone else was obviously on holiday or in a meeting. The site has been taken offline indefinitely, and the only remaining question is whether Plurk, which is a pretty small and young startup, will bother to try and take matters further, which given the legal resources MSN has, is probably unlikely…

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A recap on the original three microblogging platforms.

July 13, 2009 By

Once upon a time, there were three prominent microblogging platforms, Twitter, Plurk and Jaiku. One became incredibly popular, one introduced a side-on view, and one was acquired and then released by the Google Fairy Godmother.

Others fell by the wayside, including Pownce, and Rejaw.

But how do they compare now, after the mainstream adoption of Twitter:

Obviously this doesn’t tell the complete story, as it tracks web visits only, but it’s safe to assume it’s proportionally correct. Twitter’s close to 25 million Unique Visitors, Plurk is holding steady between 250,000-300,000 for the past year, and Jaiku has dropped from 70,000 down to 30-40,000 for the last two months measured.

In fact, it’s not even winning the Open Source Microblogging Platform war – as Identi.ca has grown slightly while Jaiku declined.

Meanwhile, Google has listed the 46 official accounts it has on Twitter.

And in the meantime, we’ve seen the rise of Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck, internal microblogging such as Yammer,  the blend of micro and macro blogging in Tumblr and Posterous, and video and audio blogging with the likes of 12 seconds and Audioboo. Not forgetting the lifestreaming element of the likes of Friendfeed.

And although we talk about forums, blogs and Web 2.0 social networks as if they’ve reached the endpoint of their evolution, there’s still a lot more to come from them – I’d say the social elements of the web aren’t even 15% of what they’ll become in the next 10 years.

The question is how you as a person, you as a company, or you as a developer can find clarity through it all…

(There is also the question fo what Google were thinking re: Jaiku, and how it’s managing to miss out on the rise of Open Source as much as it did on the rise of microblogging – after all, the platform itself doesn’t appear to be the cause)

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Plurk and Jaiku both arrive on the iPhone

January 13, 2009 By

You do remember there are some microblogging networks other than Twitter?

If so, and you have an iPhone, you’ll be happy to know that there’s an official Plurk application, iPlurk, now available via the App store. Ironically for a service that differentiates itself from Twitter with a horizontal timeline and more graphical interface, both aspects have been dropped for the iPhone – then again, if you’re already engaged with the Plurk community, it might make more sense for a lighter interface to update when you’re on the move?

Meanwhile, the Google-owned Jaiku now has it’s own app, developed by third party mJaiku.  It’s got most of the features you’d expect to find, although a test by Darnell Clayton over at Blog Herald reveals that it doesn’t support domain shortening, which may be a significant pain in use. But the good thing is you can contact the developer via Jaiku at raiglstorfer

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Some interesting thoughts on Twitter and Friendfeed

December 7, 2008 By

Before you get back to work on Monday (or for some reading before you get down to working), there have been a few interesting and thought-provoking posts I’ve spotted:

Robert Scoble posted 10 reasons why Twitter direct messages suck, which I expected to disagree with, but he made a lot of sense in explaining why the amount of messages he receives means that he realistically has to ignore them – he can’t autorespond, file, filter, or mass delete, so it becomes unworkable.

Stowe Boyd then takes it and runs further, to outline how the problem could result in an opportunity to earn some revenue for Twitter, around improving the integration and functionality of direct messaging for those willing to pay $5 a month.

My thought is that it’s a very small group who need these features as an absolute necessity, but a larger number might be persuaded they need them. It’s certainly something I could see Twitter exploring, and I suspect that by offering it as a Freemium service, they could avoid some of the ‘sell-out’ accusations that display advertising will generate.

I’m not sure it’s enough to please the VCs and justify the valuation of Twitter – but I’m increasingly convinced that there isn’t a sole revenue stream that provides a complete solution – and it could be a mixture which becomes the answer.

The other thought piece I thought was worth repeating was Dave Winer on The Space Between Twitter and FriendFeed. Is there room for something that exists with a more graphic and visual system than Twitter, but without some of the complexity of Friendfeed which can put users off?

Obviously this wasn’t Pownce. But could it be a direction for Plurk, which already has a far more visual interface? Or one of the services I have to admit to overlooking a little in the influx of clones, copies and variations, such as Rejaw? And would it be enough to achieve the most important and challenging part of taking on Twitter – getting critical mass? Friendfeed is different enough to fulfill a slightly different function and have an identity away from microblogging, but would something in the Friendfeed/Twitter chasm be cursed by being too much of one or the other?

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Six Apart acquire Pownce – to kill it in 2 weeks.

December 2, 2008 By

In a slightly bizarre move, blogging platform Six Apart (Movable Type, Typepad and Vox) has acquired Pownce  for an undisclosed sum – and it’s immediately been announced Pownce will be closed on December 15th, 2008 – just two weeks away.

The news has been revealed on the offical Pownce blog ‘Goodbye Pownce, Hello Six Apart‘, written by Leah Culver:

” We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all….

*snip*

We’ll be closing down the main Pownce website two weeks from today, December 15th. Since we’d like for you to have access to all your Pownce messages, we’ve added an export function. Visit pownce.com/settings/export/ to generate your export file. You can then import your posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress.

For our Pro members, we’ll be emailing you soon with more information about your Pro account.”

The post explains Mike Malone and Leah Culver will join Six Apart’s engineering team. Anthony Ha at VentureBeat has said that Digg founder Kevin Rose and Digg employee Daniel Burka who were also responsible for Digg will now be advisors to Six Apart.

The official Six Apart blog offers those who paid for a Pownce Pro account a free Typepad account for a year.

You can see some of the latest messages from users on the Pownce homepage.

You can see the responses from Twitter users on the Pownce closure.

There’s a FriendFeed room set up for PownceExiles to reconnect.

Interestingly, @nickdawson has spotted: http://postpownce.com/ – could be official or fan created. The Whois lookup isn’t particularly helpful, but it looks slightly unofficial so far.

Meanwhile, there’s a surprisingly amount of people using Pownce as normal, although there’s obviously a significant number who are either thanking the Pownce team, or expressing their anger – and it seems like users are mainly migrating to Twitter, with a few mentions of FriendFeed.

Strangely, Twitter has the mass user group and VC funding, but Pownce had direct revenue streams already in place, with paid membership upgrades and advertising.Meanwhile Jaiku, Plurk, Identi.ca etc are all continuing, as far as I’m aware, without a mass surge in users or a revenue model that has been revealed. Will any other microblogging services be under threat in the coming months?

I’ve blogged about my lack of enthusiasm for Digg several times over at TheWayoftheWeb, but I don’t think it’s necessarily about the Pownce team ‘failing’ – it’s likely that the impending financial situation, and an attractive offer may have been too tempting to turn down. But it does reinforce my opinion of Kevin Rose’s companies as lacking a bit of customer service – two weeks for people to leave Pownce and shut the door behind them isn’t particularly accomodating.

You can see part of the justification for the closure:

It may be U.S. traffic only, but it’s a pretty fair representation.

Interestingly, from a closer look at the numbers, it suggests that from the ‘big four’, Jaiku would be the next logical service for the chopping block – with Plurk leading the ‘Everything except for Twitter’ group.

My two thoughts are that perhaps the team behind Pownce weren’t seeing the growth they hoped for, and with Twitter being open about monetizing next year, it seemed a good time to exit with some money.

And that perhaps the move to greater federation (e.g. Facebook Connect etc), and aggregation (posting via clients or apps to multiple locations), the prospects of success for a relatively small microblogging platform were diminishing – especially with new services offering the chance to set up private groups (Twingr.com), and services like Drop.io simplifying file sharing.

From a personal point of view, the file sharing aspect wasn’t enough for me to devote enough time on Pownce to build a big community, but I did enjoy popping in for short visits on occasion, and I’m definitely sad to see any microblogging/microsharing service closed suddenly, and without any warning.

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Will the financial crisis force Twitter to monetise?

October 13, 2008 By

Could the current financial situation force Twitter to start monetising microblogging with a newfound urgency?

Yes?

  • Within the $20 million in VC funding, there is bound to be an element feeling a little twitchy at the moment.
  • Would anyone buy a service for the valuations Twitter has had, without a working financial model?

No?

  • $20 million can go a long way, if you’re careful!
  • If Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg is being honest that the social network is concentrating on growth over revenue for three more years, then as the pre-eminent microblogging site, Twitter could follow a similar plan. The only flaw is that Facebook is already making money, just not as much as it could!

These are some initial thoughts, so it would be great to hear some opinions and ideas! Personally I think that we may see some of the smaller microblogging sites, perhaps Plurk for example, need to find revenue generation before Twitter, simply due to the lack of funding reserves. Twitter has the advantage of being able to sit back, and perhaps see some of the experimentation take place before acting.

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A Monday Microblog catch-up…

August 18, 2008 By

I know Friday is the traditional day for a round-up post, but so much happens in the microblogosphere on a daily basis, all the 140char team have been busy, and Monday gives some nice alliteration:

Twitter stats on Outbound UK SMS usage

So not too much has happened!

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So which microblogging platforms do you use?

August 4, 2008 By

It’s important for us to have an idea of what microblogging tools are most used by our readers. And so:

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Twitter shakes the ground under major news websites: How they have to adapt

July 30, 2008 By

It’s happened again. Yet again, an earthquake has occurred, this time in the U.S. – and yet again I found out about it from Twitter as it happened, rather than from one of the news websites minutes later. In fact, I’d even reported on it, and uploaded an image from Twitter to 140char.com before the BBC website had any coverage.

And when the BBC does cover it, look at the lack of any responses. Now compare that to the sheer amount of updates which occurred on Twitter, even during the quake itself.

As microblogging sites increase and users can upload almost instantly from mobiles, news websites need to respond in a far more proactive way. I know the BBC is UK based, but even American media like CNN were apparently late to the party.

For a while news websites have had increased competition, particularly from prominent blogs, but they still had the resources to be the first point for news, and the first place people headed for if they wanted to upload pictures and videos. One significant early stage of Citizen Journalism was the London Underground bombing in July 2005. But now people already have significant networks and reach to share thoughts, images, and video incredibly quickly with a potentially large circle of people without needing the news portal to distribute it. In fact, during 9/11, when traffic brought news websites to a halt, I was ignoring the television to use Instant Messaging and forums to chat with friends in the U.S and at large news organisations to find out what was happening.

And if Twitter or similar tools become mainstream, breaking news is over. You might still get a few minutes grace on embargoed content before it’s replicated throughout the world, but reacting to something just happening? By the time your assigned staff reporter is taking notes, or your Web Producer has been woken up, Twitter users around the world (Tweeple) are already reacting.

As far as I can see, there are a few options still left:

1. Stop autofeeding your late news to Twitter. Particularly when we already know about the earthquake, and it’s been on your website for ages. It highlights that you haven’t bothered understanding how it works. And it isn’t the first time. Earthquakes in China and the UK, Heath Ledger’s death…you got beaten before and you’ll get beaten again.

2. Do make sure all your reporters have decent mobile phones. And can update straight to a Twitter account without worrying about grammar, subbing, or waiting until you have a story to link to on your main website. It’s not about driving traffic, it’s about breaking news. That’s what journalism is about. Get back your reputation for breaking news, and people will respond. And then when you do release an in-depth analysis on the website, and aggregate information, you’ll have an audience which responds.

3. Start aggregating Twitter onto your site. It takes two seconds to set up a Twitter Search result. Put a space in your news template for RSS feeds, and use them to plug Twitter in as soon as something happens. Start collating all the notable Tweets, and speaking to the people behind them. You’ll get responses far quicker than making your reporter get out of bed.

Alternatively:

1. While your print product is already falling, and you’re coming to terms that things are changing a bit more quickly, microblogging takes away one of the major selling points of a major news company. You no longer have scoops, and because you’ve cut back to save costs in an uncertain time, you don’t have the staff or resources to file in-depth analysis and responses to breaking news quick enough to beat experts on blogs, and aggregators.

Don’t stop evolving halfway out of the swamp.

Not a cheerful post perhaps, but the internet evolves faster than any previous form of communication. It took a good 10 years or so for the real effect on the media, and the decline of print and television to be felt to the point major corporations and companies got scared and started really responding. But while the slow pace of change happens within the organisation, outside the pace of change is far quicker – and it’s always happening. There is no single answer to maintaining a sizeable presence on the internet unless it is to become an organisation that can respond quickly and efficiently to new challenges on a monthly basis – even if it means ripping up your website and starting again! Halfway measures will satisfy less and less people. And they’ll definitely be uploading their complaints in 140 characters.

Edit: Turns out the LA Times is running Twitter in a Technology article highlighting how well it works for news, which you can see here. Strange then, it isn’t integrated into their general news coverage? The Guardian putting Twitter on blogs is again, a tiny, tiny step in the right direction, but it’s a start I guess – even if it isn’t working at the moment!

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