While it may seem like I’m always high on a new tool or site, I really do think I’m pretty choosy about the ones that I wind up sharing. And I wouldn’t blog about it, if I didn’t feel there was merit to it and it was worth exploring. Which is why I wanted to mention Plurk here.
I’ve been using Plurk extensively over the past few days and have started to think that it really could be a better Twitter than Twitter. And after seeing some really neat things happening there, I thought I’d share some of the ‘highlights’ of my Plurk explorations. And while I’m not ready to leave Twitter completely, let me share why I’m digging on Plurk.
Why I *heart* Plurk:
- Conversations are threaded together. When you reply to someone, it STAYS with the original post. On Twitter you have to click from page to page to page to try to follow a conversation. Which is tedious at best. On Plurk, you have one hyperlink to the entire conversation. For example, here is a single link to a live blog/backchannel for Ian Juke’s presentation today. 199 posts, one thread with one link. Don’t want to see those posts? You have one conversation to ignore, or you can even mute it.
- If you link to a video or image, it creates a thumbnail. Yes, that’s kind of fluffy, but it’s a very nice touch.
- While there aren’t many tools out there yet, there are a few that are pretty darn creative. For example, Pollk, which allows you to create polls on Plurk and embed them in. It gives you code to paste in, and as people vote, the thumbnail in your original post changes to reflect the current state of voting. VERY slick. Check out this post and click on the thumbnail to see it in action.
I think I’m going to leave it at those three for right now. There’s more, but I don’t think I need to make a giant list. Of course, there are things that I don’t like about Plurk. For one thing, the timeline is hard to get used to. Maybe if I’d seen it before Twitter, it’d be easier, but I’m so used to seeing things from the top down. Discovering that you can use the arrow keys to scroll though helps tremendously. I’m also not a huge fan of the whole karma thing. I’m pretty competitive, and when I saw that there’s a karma score, I wanted to rack up points. It’s shallow, it’s silly, but to be 100% truthful, I just can’t help myself. You get points for posting, replying and recruiting friends through your unique code. For example, this link would give me credit for you joining, while this one would not. Build Karma, earn things like new emoticons and the ability to change your background. Personally, I think it should be an opt in sort of ‘game’, but that’s part of their schtick I guess. If you have more will power than I do, you could always just ignore it.
Why I’m getting down on Twitter:
- It’s as Twitter as…. well, there’s nothing to compare it to. I’ve never seen a popular site have as many technical issues as Twitter does. Nobody is surprised when it goes down. It’s flaky enough that their error page has even earned itself a fan club. That’s just wrong. Plurk is only a couple months old, so it’s possible it’ll run into these issues when it grows too. Hopefully they’ve learned from Twitter’s mistakes though. Crossing my fingers.
- I’m tired of depending on third party sites to make Twitter manageable. I’m one of the people that actually goes to Twitter.com regularly. For about a week, replies were dead. I follow a pretty high number of people. If I can’t see who’s talking to me, I might as well not even use the tool. So I started keeping Summize open as well so I could see if anyone replied to my Tweets. That meant I was keeping two tabs open to get basic functionality out of a single site. Feh. Also, things like the built in Tiny URL converter has always been flaky. I’ve gotten into the habit of using third party URL shorteners any time I want to link to something. Not a huge deal, but it’s extra steps that should be unnecessary.
- Go look at the Twitter Status Blog. You know why that’s there? Because there’s always something wrong. In the month of June, there were only four days that they didn’t have to put something up there, letting people know what the status was of broken features. That’s just sad. And on the subject of broken features, have you ever tried to nudge somebody? Does that mysterious link actually do anything? Not so far as I’ve been able to see. And I’ve flagged many people to have their tweets sent to my cell phone and have never received a single message. However, Direct messages arrive just fine. Love for somebody to explain that one to me.
The best thing about Twitter is… well, it’s the network. It’s where people are at right now. That’s the number one thing that Twitter has and that Plurk doesn’t. That’s also why I’m not going to give up on Twitter just yet. But I find I’m visiting Plurk first thing in the morning, and only checking out Twitter when I’m done. As much as I’ve liked Twitter over the past year or so, I feel like they’ve done their very best to drive me away. And while alternatives have been available (Pownce, Jaiku), Plurk is the first one that actually feels ‘right’ to me. I’m not saying this because it’s shiny, or because it’s new. I’m saying it because after spending some time there, it feels like Twitter, but a step or two up the evolutionary chain.
While I would never ask anybody to leave their well-established community, I do suggest that you visit Plurk and give it a try for yourself. And give it a day or two, when you have some time. It feels very awkward at first and takes some getting used to. After being doubters, many people have come to change their mind. Hope to see you there!
Steve, we are in sync with our thoughts on both Plurk and Twitter. I participated in Ginger’s almost 200 entry live-blogging Plurk thread. Plurk can certainly handle the load, it seems.
I think it is a little hard to compare the success and failures right now between Plurk and Twitter because they are just simply in 2 different points of time. Plus we don’t know what is coming up from Twitter with their recent funding increases. But. Plurk certainly is intriguing. With its visual interface, spatial organization, interactivity, and karma it is certain to appeal to more ambiguous right-brain dominant creatives. The ability to keep related posts from a discrete conversation together in a discussion thread also appeals to my sense of maintaining interpersonal relationships and developing “groupness”.
At 21CT, I wrote about the Ian Jukes live blogging on Plurk as it was in process yesterday, so a little more here for your readers.
I do find that I am spending more time at Plurk than Twitter the last couple days. Does that mean that Plurk is just a fad or a serious tool that feels more comfortable in my right-brained hands? I guess I´ll have to wait a little longer to see.
Frank, 21CT
http://franksblog.edublogs.org
21CT - Frank’s Blog’s most recent blog post.. 21CT: My Social Bookmarks (weekly)
[…] Reading: Why I *heart* Plurk by Steve Dembo addthis_url = […]
Great post. I agree…I’m pretty excited about plurk too. It seems to have taken off in the last few days, during NECC I suspect. I also followed the live blogging session on plurk. Being able to follow an entire conversation in this way is probably plurk’s best feature
Julie Squires’s most recent blog post.. Inanimate Alice is a Learning Gem…
For the record, I wasn’t sure how many responses could go into a single plurk, so I actually had 2 plurks–one before lunch, found here: http://www.plurk.com/p/und4 and then the one you linked to after lunch.
Live blogging is so important to me. If I’m just taking “notes” for myself, I won’t do it and won’t end up listening, even to such an amazing guy as Jukes. It’s my “twitch” personality.
So unobtrusive live blogging on Plurk is such a plus. Someone doesn’t want to hear? Mute the conversation. But if I posted 270 times in a 6 hour time span on Twitter, I’m just an ass.
GingerTPLC’s most recent blog post.. Tool Lust? heck yah!
[…] Dembo posted an excellent look at Plurk on his blog today and did a great job of outlining what many of us in the Plurk community have seen […]
Steve,
I just posted a follow up on your overview on my own blog. I’m really starting to see the power of Plurk for working deeply with a PLN and agree with Ginger’s comments above. There are things you can do in Plurk like live blogging that are plain annoying (and almost impossible) in twitter. Hoping to see more people give Plurk a try.
Michelle Bourgeois’s most recent blog post.. Plurking your PLN
Hey Steve,
Great post on twitter and plurk. I was hesistant about trying plurk as I find that twitter does the job for me. I only follow about 90 people (you are one of them 
) and 75 follow me. I decided that I should try this new tool and give it shot since so many of my network friends have been.
Since you seem to have a good “relationship” with plurk and are having success, maybe you could help me with this one…
Do you have any ideas as to why plurk would not work on a MacBook running FF, os 10.1.10 and Quicktime 7.4? I am not seeing the interactive timeline nor can I plurk from this machine. Although, I can go into the profile, check my widget and plurk from the widget? Makes no sense. My Mac mini, 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.3 and FF3 runs smoothly with plurk. I have contacted the plurk “contact us” three times over the last four days and no response. That does not sit well for me when trying out a new tool…
Plurk and Twitter are very different and each has features that I like. Maybe an anticipated mini-migration to plurk will get the twitter guys and gals moving on fixing some of the things that go haywire from time to time. Since plurk is so new i just am wondering when they are going to start having troubles. Or, is my no reply from their customer service an indication? I want to give plurk a chance and am looking for any ideas from anyone or anywhere.
See you on Twitter (on my laptop) and Plurk (on my mac mini)
-Tracy
traymur
Oopss..my link for my blog is not working in the above comment. Fingers are not typing to well this morning.
Sorry Steve.
-T
Steve,
I’m just plurked one of your comments that I’ve been ‘warming’ to Plurk as well. I still don’t like the headless animal and think for educators that would be an IMMEDIATE turn off. That is why I didn’t join right away after Alec Courosa’s invite!
I’m amazed in a week how much of my community has switched over! I do like the timeline (even though it goes backwards for me). I love how the conversations are grouped and am sure, just like Twitter, many other extensions will start up!
Mark Carls’s most recent blog post.. NECC 1st day
Everyone who knows me already knows that I am addicted to Plurk. Been blogging it up already (including a post with video lessons).
What I want to know is how you happened to join Plurk and not friend me??? (Sent the friend request myself, instead!)
Welcome to Plurk!
I’m struggling with Plurk. Part of it has to do with me being unable to kick my Twitter fix, part of it is the way that Plurks are laid out, and part of it is the fact that I haven’t invested the time necessary to find all my Plurk friends.
I want to like Plurk. I love the layout; I love the color scheme. But I feel overwhelmed every time I log onto Plurk – 110 conversations? Ugh, I can’t process that. I’m going to give it another concerted effort. I want to love Plurk, I really do.
Does anyone know if there is a Plurk client (like twhirl for Twitter)?
Steve Kinney’s most recent blog post.. The case for open communication
[…] blog about it, if I didn??t feel there was merit to it and it was worth exploring. Which is whyhttp://www.teach42.com/2008/06/29/why-i-heart-plurk/Cellphonecarriers.comOffers cellular phone information, advice, features, history, and […]
10/23/2008
Agreed. But plurk does not pick up your twitter followers so it is difficult to get your PLN migrating. Twitter needs to pull it’s socks up and embed certain features like http/;//tweet2tweet.com which allows you to follow a conversation between 2 users but even still it doesn’t track a thread between many users like plurk can. My following has slowly increased to 200+ and I want to be able to keep up but it takes too long to be practical. Twitter then becomes more like a pub session - it’s great if you’re there but you had to be there. More and more I feel I have missed out and following the thread takes too long when I’ve got oodles of other things to be doing.
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