MS launches twitter-like service in China

BEIJING, CHINA: Microsoft has launched MSN Juku, a twitter-like service in China powered by Windows Live Messenger.



The new service, which is now in beta, lets users post 140-character messages to an update screen that slowly scrolls old messages to the right.

However, The Industry Standard reports, MSN China, the Microsoft joint venture that developed the new product, insisted it is not a microblog service but a 'local innovation'.

With Juku, which comes after Yahoo introduced a similar service called Yahoo MeMe, users can play simple games and earn prizes such as new face icons to post in messages. Users can also upload a profile picture, visit the pages of other users and add them as friends.

The report claims that about 124 million people, or one in three of China's Internet users, currently use social-networking sites, citing the country's domain registry agency. It also says that half of China's social-network users post microblog entries online at least once a day.

The statistics obviously indicates a high growth prospects for microblogging style innovations.