In early June, I began using the micro-blogging site Plurk. I posted previously a few days in. About a month later, though it seems longer, I'm updating my impressions.First, Plurk is not a Twitter clone or substitute. The principle difference, aside from the obvious cosmetic ones, is the ease with which conversations are carried on. It's easy to follow the evolution of the sometimes lengthy conversations that develop in the drop-down that appears below the original entry. You don't need to scroll through a lengthy list of posts picking out the threads of a discussion.. Plurk verges on being a chatroom, far more immediate and decidedly more social than competing sites.
During the past month, the Plurk development team has been steadily rolling out more features: conversation muting, private messaging to individuals or groups, search, and more. Plurk has bugs, no question. I find it odd that features that function well for some don't work for others. For instance, I have a friend who can't send private plurks though most people can. The conversation mute feature works
sporadically for me.One of the nicest and most used features of Plurk is the ability to link to images and videos with a thumbnail. Clicking that thumbnail will open a Plurk window for inline viewing without opening a new tab or browser window. Not that this is perfect yet. You can't go back to your timeline while continuing to play the video, something that frequently causes me to decline playing an entire video. However, in the Plurk media window is a direct link that will open the item in a new tab/window.
The people who populate Plurk are it's true strength. Most are very friendly and open, interested in the type of social exchange that seems unique to Plurk. I can usually pick out a new plurker who has a hardcore Twitter history. They tend to make announcements and don't get very conversational. Included in a plurk member's stats are two key number: plurks and plurk responses. I generate a sort of social index (plurk responses divided by plurks) that I think somewhat quantifies a plurkers sense of community. A plurker with a small quotient tends to make a lot of announcements with limited engagement in social conversation.
Plurk is not going to be for everybody. I don't think it was ever intended to be. But, for the people who use it regularly, it seems to be a genuinely good experience.
(Notice, a blog post about Plurk with no discussion of karma!)
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