Twitter-style Service launched by Microsoft in China
A micro-blog service based on Windows Messenger has been launched in China by Microsoft, expanding social-networking functions linked to the chat software in a country where it is a hit. The new service, which is called MSN Juku and is now running in beta, offers users to post 140 character messages to an update screen that slowly scrolls old messages to the right as the new ones appear. A lot of Twitter-style services have appeared in China in recent months as social-networking sites grow increasingly popular, so the new MSN service is likely an effort by Microsoft to win more users for its social-networking products as well as its instant-messaging service.