Facebook keeps doing this thing where it tries to buy a startup, and when the startup refuses to sell, Facebook does its best to choke the startup to death.

Last year Facebook did this with Snapchat, the photo-sharing app where the photos disappear after a few seconds.

After brief talks in the fall went nowehere, Facebook came out with an exact clone of Snapchat called Poke.

The latest example is from ace WSJ reporter Evelyn Rusli, in the middle a longer story about how Facebook isn't getting along with Facebook developers lately.

Rusli writes:

On Friday, Facebook blocked MessageMe Inc., a messaging service that had just launched days earlier, from accessing users' friends list. Arjun Sethi, a MessageMe co-founder, said Facebook cited a section of its policy that addressed restricting apps that copied a core Facebook product or service.

According to people familiar with the matter, the fledgling service had recently rebuffed takeover interest from the social networking company.

Facebook declined to comment.

Also last year, a startup entrepreneur named Dalton Caldwell said Facebook threatened to kill his startup after he refused to sell, too.

There's not anything wrong with Facebook's behavoir here. All's fair and all that. But, wowzers, do those folks play some hardball.

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