It turns out, I didn’t have to dig too far, Plurk’s blog post kind of say’s it all. TechCrunch, NYT, WSJ and many others have also covered this news.

To put it simply, Plurk, a Canada based micro-blogging service that is very popular in Asia is claiming that Microsoft China has “ripped off” their code, UI and design, for their own MSN Juku micro-blogging service. From the looks of the images representing the UI and the code base it appears to be a blatant copyright violation on Microsoft’s part.

So far, only TechCrunch seem to be reporting a statement made by Microsoft:

“Microsoft takes intellectual property seriously, and we are currently investigating these allegations. It may take some time due to the time zone differences with Beijing.”

It’s a weak statement, and looks like Microsoft is going to have a pretty bad week with this headache. However, I don’t think this is just a standard copyright violation, politics is playing a part here…. especially as Plurk is blocked in China!!.

What do you all say?

Here is the list of startups that presented in the DemoPit, as you’ll see they were not all web startups, some offered innovative cameras, bluetooth headsets and gadgets to remotely control your race cars through the browser! My favorites are iTwin, UserHeat and the PatentBueau… all of which should help increase efficiency and productivity one way or another.

From TC50:
iTwin (Singapore)
LifeMee (Japan)
SealTale (South Korea)
SpySee (Japan)

New Japanese Startups (alphabetically listed):
Adlantis
Ataritsuki
Cerevo Cam
Cognitive Function Balance (from Ledex)
Conit
Fabric Video
HaaLee
Istpika
Jingoo
JokerRacer
Lang-8
LinkThink
MOT
Orihime
Pankaku
Patent Bureau
Pixiv
Photiva
Phroni
RainbowApps
Rigureto
Speeda
Tabereko
UserHeat
Wombit

For a more extensive review on some of the stronger demos… click through to TechCrunch’s review of TokyoCamp.

China never fails to amaze me with the number of “copycat” websites adapting successful business model in the US for use in China. Was reading this article on TechCrunch on Tudou.com – aiming to be the YouTube in China. Tudou is one of two companies left fighting it out to be the YouTube of China (the other company is YouKu). Both burning through hundreds of millions between them trying to find what YouTube still hasn’t: A way for online advertising to pay for video’s outrageous broadband costs.

Just last week, Tudou won a deal to be the online video channel for China Mobile. So far video can only run on high-end phones and much of China can’t even get 2G access, let alone 3G. However, Tudou is optimistic about the future as China Mobile is investing some 58 million RMB to build out 3G infrastructure in China. China Mobile is also planning video-subscription plans that offer unlimited uploading and downloading of video for the equivalent of 75 cents a month – that makes it very affordable for the masses to upload and download videos – throwing the floodgate of user generate video in China wide open.

In addition, they foresee the changing of technology as Taiwan chip company MTK is developing chipsets that allow very low-end phones the ability to download and upload video – this means that even with a low-end handset, consumers would be able to view video on their mobile phone.  And lastly, in China people are replacing their handsets roughly every nine months. That means all of these changes could ripple out faster than if they required, day, a PC upgrade cycle to complete.

Tudou sees mobile video starting to take off in 2010, growing rapidly in 2011, and in 2012 generating enough actual revenues to equal what it makes in traditional online advertising. In the mean time, content being king, the company is running around Asia doing content deals to add professionally produced, non-pirated content to the 30 million pieces of video inventory Tudou has already. The company is also producing a ton of original content and reality TV shows for its website.

Being curious, I went over to Tudou.com to try out its services on my 100 Mbps line and the video content download experience have been very slow (maybe because Tudou’s server is in China and optimize for use in China). Guess there will still be a need to invest in their video hosting servers if they were to target audiences outside China. I had yet had the chance to test out the services in China to see if the download experience is the same….any feedback on their video download experience in China would be great.

TokyoCamp is the Japanese equivalent of TechCrunch’s TC50 event which invites a number of startups to demo their Software, Service or Product in a ‘Demo Pit’ followed by lots of networking with key Web and Tech influencers.

This is the 2nd ever TokyoCamp, and looks to be bigger and better than the first one back in August.  On this occasion there will be 21 startups demoing their ‘wares’.

It’s a full day event followed by a meet-up from 8-10pm… at the cost of 6000 yen.

Register Here… or Click Here for more information.

If you’re going, we’d love to hear from you so just let us know.

It comes to no surprise that Lee Kai-Fu picks out cloud computing, e-commerce and the mobile platform industry for investments. A critical mass is forming as more consumers embrace the Internet channel for transactions. Lack of trust, poor delivery systems and unclear payment structures are slowly become barriers of the past. We have seen lots of development in payment platform in China from China Union Pay, AliPay, bridging the gap between offline payment and online payment.

According to Lee, “Only a third of the Chinese population as a percentage is online and those who are online spend only one-sixteenth of the American. The growth opportunity just to catch up with the U.S. is … 48 times.” Similar opportunities exist in mobile advertising and cloud computing, a business model built on providing services over the Internet.

Guess  Asia Pacific is definitely a space to watch for in the next few years for online innovations and new business model – with both China and India, presenting huge opportunity for businesses.

Meiloo.com – founded by Yan Zhang, is a website that helps Chinese Internet users find, source and compare doctors and hospitals for elective surgery. Elective health care services are a $10 billion a year market in China that already heavily advertises on TV, billboards and the Web. Meiloo.com aggregates the contents as well as provide an online booking facility for doctors/hospitals. In return for marketing their services to the broad consumer base, doctors and hospitals actually pay Meiloo a cut of the surgery fees. Yan Zhang leveraged on the distribution power of the Internet channel to reach out to the large population of consumers that choose to search online for information and book their surgery at the convenience of their home.

Although not a huge population will jump onto the bandwagon of booking elective surgery online, the ability to capture just 1 – 2 % of the consumer market in China is already mind boggling (CTrip taps less than 10% of the domestic travel market and is a multi-billion company).  Meiloo is growing transactions at a pace of 15%-25% per month, and has helped book nearly $1 million US dollars in transactions in the last twelve months.

Would definitely not be surprise to hear of more success stories and original business model sprouting out of China as more and more business and individual starts to embrace the online channel.

Unfortunately, due to my full time job, I only have time to attend 1 evening event per day… so I’ve registered to go to:

Tuesday: Growth Town
Wednesday: Social Innovation Meetup (a time to gather and generate ideas for the camp in March)
Thursday: Ignite Sydney

But there are a lot more very cool and exciting events…

Are any of our readers going to any events in Sydney this week? We’d love to hear from you.

Tweet me on @hiconomics and let’s hook up.

According to the article, and Eric Schmidt’s statement: ”Acquisitions are turned on again at Google and we are doing our normal manoeuvres.” … Google is clearly back on the acquisition trail.

What does this mean for start-ups in APAC?

Well throughout the financial crisis, the world has witnessed a shift of economic power from West to East… and as many of the APAC markets fall under the ‘Emerging Markets’ category there is likely to be a lot of interest. Google has still not cracked China, Japan or Korea.. not to mention a lot of the other markets… so clearly something to monitor and observe.

Could we be seeing some Google acquisitions soon?

Update:  It looks like Yahoo7 (a joint venture between Yahoo! and Channel 7 in Australia) is also on the acquisition trail.

In order to be successful in China, business model will have to take into considerations language, infrastructure, consumer behavior as well as legal and political system (which tend to be very different from the “west”). Thus new and innovative model will need to be formed to adapt to the online/offline structure in China.

To date, many of the online initiatives have been an adaptation of the business models in the US and UK. The following are some of the more prominent online initiatives from China.

• Alibaba – Largest online B2B market place. Alibaba turns 1o this year as well and announced that it aims to create 100 million jobs, employ 10 million people – really exciting isn’t it (click here for more details on that)
• AliPay – Subsidary of Alibaba, providing payment services in China
• ChinaUnionPay – Payment service provider in China that is integrated to the China banking system. They are portray as the “Visa / MasterCard” of China.
• Baidu – The dominant search engine in China with over 65%
• CTrip – The largest and most successful online travel agency in China
• Kaixin001 – Dub as the “Facebook” of China. Very similar to Facebook model, Kaixin001 is the biggest social network sites in China. There are many more of such sites in China that basically emulate the Facebook model.

Just few weeks back, we saw that news that Kai-fu Lee quits Google China to start his own venture (Innovation Works) – to fund Chinese technology start-ups : a platform where young Chinese can get “angel funding” to start their enterprises. According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, Lee was expected to establish an investment firm with about 800 million yuan ($117.1 million) in funds to help technology start-ups grow in mainland China.

It will really be interesting to know how this new venture will pan out in China and whether it will fuel new business model / products originating from China – only time will tell, but it will definitely be exciting times ahead in China.

You can view the slide-show here.