I was initially a little hesitant to write about a post about Plurk. I prefer to review only the best and most useful services, not simply whatever new startup appears on TechCrunch a while ago.
However I’ve only been using Plurk for a couple of days and I’m completely converted, in fact over the last week or so (in between bitching about Twitter) a number of people have started moving over, Darren Rowse (Problogger.net) being a notable example.
Plurk is a shiny new startup which although about 3 months old, just gained exposure through a featuring on TechCrunch and from there a number of other large tech blogs. In fact take a look at the not-so-exponential growth of users via the Plurk blog.
Many of these early adopters are simply checking the service out from curiosity and using it as some kind of threat (“Any more Twitter downtime and I’m leaving!”). However I have confidence Plurk is a lot more then just a hype, and I wanted to share what it is that I think makes this service stand out.
What is Plurk?
Plurk is the latest in a whole string of life-streaming and micro-blogging services. It’s going up against Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr and Friend Feed, but is it simply Twitter-with-more-features? If so then that sure hasn’t work for Jaiku, and even Pownce isn’t getting the kind of Digg success story founder Kevin Rose hoped for.
So why would Plurk be any different?
Well I think Plurk has a whole new innovative take on social networking. If you’re still hesitant about the idea of trying yet another service then here are some of the things you can expect from Plurk.
A Sense of Humour
It’s hard to believe, but Plurk really is a company with a genuinely funny sense of humour. Just take the name for a start, it sounds kind of… blurghh… but the Plurk team has good reason which the outline in a recent blog post entitled ‘Plurk’? An etymological deconstruction of the word you love to hate:
- Plurk as stalkerati central: People + Lurk = Plurk
- Plurk as an amalgam of Play + Work: Play-Work. Plurk is what scientists do. It is the enthusiastic, energetic application of oneself to the task at hand as a child excitedly plays; it is the intense arduous, meticulous work of an artist on their life-long masterpiece; it is joyful work. (credit)
- Plurk as acronym: Peace, Love, Unity, Respect, Karma
Verb potential: “Oh I googled this –> Oh I plurked it” Easy enough to wrap around in any form. Plurked, plurking, plurkers, plurks. Little p, big P, it’s catchy, snippy and sweet. - These are some pretty good justifications if you ask me. But seriously, the company is open, communicative and honest. Twitter seems to be trying to do something like this but unfortunately, maybe too late.
These are some pretty good justifications if you ask me. But seriously, the company is open, communicative and honest. Twitter seems to be trying to do something like this but unfortunately, maybe too late.
User Interface
Plurk differs from just about every other social network, microblogging and life streaming service on the planet by having a horizontal scrolling timeline. I love it.
The colour scheme is vaguely similar to the WordPress 2.5 dashboard and much more attractive and intuitive then Twitter.
The Plurk team has this to say on the subject:
…behind every corner, you’ll find shiny new goodies which will only make your Plurk experience that much more enjoyable but we want to ensure that the basic premise of the application is something that ANY user, whether they’re 13 or 99 years old, will get within mere seconds of visiting and using the site.
I couldn’t agree more. It’ll take you all of three seconds to figure out how to use Plurk, yet the more you use it the more you’ll find these great little features you never saw before.
Here is a screen-shot of the Plurk profile homepage dashboard you can expect to see.
It’s broken down into three main sections, Stats, Friends and Fans.
The key element of your stats is what your ‘Karma’ level is. Karma is an indication of how active a ‘plurker’ you are and in some ways how interesting your conversations are. The more people you invite, the more friends you have, the more people responding to your plurks and the higher your Karma status will grow.
There are rewards for increasing your karma beyond certain levels. For example you gain the exciting ability to rename your profile page once you get over a karma level of 10, exclusive smilies at 25 and so on. It’s quite a fun concept.
When you invite friends you can even get these fancy stars to put on your profile.
Like twitter, you can follow anyone immediately, but to add them as a friend you will have to wait for their approval. The same goes for people who add you as their friend, you can either approve, cancel or have them added as just a follower.
How do Plurks work?
You can choose one of 16 ‘descriptors’ (eg: “says”, “likes”, “thinks”, “is”) for each plurk. You can also insert emoticons, video and images and can send them either as private messages, only to your contacts or as a public plurk.
Here we can how a plurk from MakeUseOf‘s Jason Mayoff looks like:
As you can see each plurk displays the user’s avatar, their descriptor and part of their message, long plurks extend with a mouse over. The number on the right is the number of responses made to that particular message.
Click it and the conversation folds out to display responses. And as you can also see Jason has retracted his statement:
I even discovered today from Eureka Tips that you can format your plurks by using the following characters in plurk:
*use asterisks* = italics
**use double asterisks** = bold
__use double underscore__ = underscore
I would suggest this is one website well worth you checking out. I never really got into Twitter and barely use it, but a couple of days and I’m loving Plurk already. Even signing up is incredibly easy, you won’t even have to accept a confirmation email.
Give it a shot.