I think you've hit the nail on the head - and that's exactly why Plurk is going ...

jamesbritt · on Dec 18, 2009

" they want publicity for themselves, and bad press for MS. In his previous blog post he begged for this to become viral."

But the upshot is that it's creating bad press for Plurk, because they're now coming off, in the words of another poster here, as petulant.

I read Microsoft's statement, then saw the Plurk comment, and I thought they came off as a bit childish.

Microsoft seems to have done the proper, stand-up thing here. Shake hands and be done.

roundsquare · on Dec 18, 2009

Seems like they misjudged. They wanted to balance out between getting sympathy and wining too much. Looks like they crossed that line.