Plurk is a microblogging platform.
Compared to Twitter it’s similar but different. Most of all Plurk doesn’t cease to introduce innovations.
And that’s what this post is about: differences and new features.
Timeline
Rather than in a vertical list, updates (plurks) appear on a horizontal timeline. When you scroll through the timeline you will pass date borders and scrolling over a plurk you’ll see exactly when it was posted.
The timeline can be filtered for all plurks, my plurks, private (plurks only you received) or responded (plurks you responded to). New responses or updates are indicated by a small status window in the bottom left.
Once you click view, you will filter for all plurks with new responses. Furthermore, you can select for responses within the four different categories. The alert for new responses remains until you mark all as read.
Conversations
Updates appear as small previews with a minimized profile photo on the left and the number of replies on the right. To view the whole post you move the mouse over the preview and to view replies you click on it.
This is the biggest difference to Twitter: there are actual conversations going on since replies are associated with the original update. Hence, comments are not lost within a long list of chronical updates.
Karma
On Twitter there is no incentive to maintain regular updates.
Karma changes that on Plurk and Karma stands for regular updates and popularity. If you don’t update at least once every 12 hours or when you lose followers your Karma will drop. With regular updates, responses to your plurks, increasing number of followers and friends your Karma will slowly rise up to 100.
With a Karma over 20, 40 and 60 you’re climbing the ladder and receive more features. For example you’ll be able to change your Plurk creature or access exclusive emoticons.
Frankly, Karma has been a real pain when you went on a vacation.
But now you can freeze your Karma, i.e. send it on a vacation along with you. It costs you 1 Karma point, but that’s less than what you will lose.
Badges
Additionally to Karma you can receive badges for reaching various milestones.
There are badges for having more then 50 followers, reaching Plurk nirvana or inviting more than 25 people. The badges are displayed below your timeline, along with several more stats, joined to the right by friends and fans.
Integration of Pictures and Videos
This is the next best difference to Twitter. Plurk recognizes links to YouTube, Flickr, TinyPic, ImageShack, and Photobucket and includes them in your update.
That means your followers no longer have to open a new window to view your link, they can view your photos or videos within Plurk, which is extremely convenient.
Status Updates to Other Services
Plurk now offers status updates for Twitter, Friendster, Facebook, and Multiply. That way you can stay in touch with all of your friends on other sites without having to make individual updates to each of these.
Unfortunately, the integration is only one way. At this point you will not be able to see Twitter updates on Plurk.
We have covered Plurk before. There’s Psst…Do You Plurk? written by Jimmy Rogers and Become A Star In The Plur Universe from me. If you’re using Firefox, you check out Matt Brian’s post about 4 Microblogging Firefox Tools You Shouldn’t Ignore.
So what do you think? Is Plurk worth your attention? Ready to switch?
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A lot of people will never take this service seriously because they have a stupid name that contains the word “lurk” (not exactly a great connotation) and a stupid logo (A headless pig? What were they THINKING?). You can beat the bushes for them all you want but with those two things going against them they will never be the service that replaces anything else on the ‘net (UNLESS they change their name and logo, but they probably have too much invested in the brand).
Seriously? That’s got to be the most ridiculous rebuttal I’ve ever heard. I use Plurk and love it – and the best thing someone can say when presented with the wealth of features that it offers over other services is “the name is dumb and the logo (which YOU CAN CHANGE, by the way) is silly.”
Wow.
I want to bring to your attention http://www.emote.in
Emote is a concept of sharing emotions, built over microblogging with full functionality of a social-networking site and a beautiful scrolling TIMELINE (www.emote.in/misc/images/timeline.JPG)
emote is a microblogging service; which is a platform to –
1. broadcast and share your emotions with your family, friends and with the entire world.
2. Make yourself heard, comment on news, stories and current affair.
3. Share your experiences, memories and events with your friends and family.
4. Connect with different people with similar emotional attributes as yours.
(ex: if atrocities on animals make you sad, connect with others who share the same feeling)
5. Jot-down your experiences. You usually have so many things to say – a constant stream of thoughts, comments and observations running through your head continuously.
6. A wonderful TIMELINE that arranges your messages in a chronological order date by date.
(A prominent micro-blog reviewer thinks so!)
http://emote.in/notice/2595
Sometimes, the important connections we make are the ones we make with ourselves.
Totally right! In fact Plurk has more traffic than Twitter according to some stats here in Singapore because of the whole threaded conversations feature that you just don’t get with Twitter.
That and their interface is a throwback to the dark days of MySpace. What a junkyard.
I agree, MySpace even nowadays has a terrible interface, which is also because users can edit it so much to make it individual.
However, in my opinion Plurk’s interface is pretty well structured and everything flows – straight forward.
Meh. Tried it.
Several of the things you list as advantages, I find to be disadvantages. Conversations? Sorry, that’s not something I find useful. Karma? An artificial stimulus to post more? Not a good thing in my book. Badges? Unlocking features? Juvenile and unwanted.
Integrated video and pictures are okay, but it’s really no big deal to me to click a link and open a new window.
In the end, I think it’s silly to write about why one piece of software “beats” another. It’s all in what best meets the users’ needs, and clearly we need different things.
It sounds like a silly game on a social network.
thanks for this review. i like this!
Hm, seems a bit complicated for me…
I like Plurk’s interface, but what I love about Twitter is that it can be mobile and it has lots of third-party apps.
They’re also saying Plurk is the Twitter for teens (smileys, etc).
So that is to say Twitter is more mature?
In terms of popularity, Plurk’s reign is only within Southeast Asia, compared to the worldwide renown of Twitter. Check out this link http://tr.im/jq6m.
There is a mobile version of Plurk available and it looks a lot more like Twitter because the timeline is gone. But it retains conversations as comments to updates.
agree, I feel like a teenager when using plurk.
Reading updates from my friends in pure text is enough for me. Don’t need to have a timeline or direct links to youtube or karma thing.
But it seems nice…perhaps a bit complicate for microblogging.
One thing I hate and love about Plurk is Karma. If you just miss a day or two, your karma goes down quite fast. However, when you leave a post and share some links and videos, you karma will jump right back where it started and can even earn more.
I just started plurking, though haven’t got any friends yet… :p my friends love facebook better :)
But plurk in some ways, is better for bloggers in a way that it can show our status actively
although facebook is better in a way of promoting our blog post :D
I think timeline is indeed the best feature comparing to twitter… i mean, everything seems to piled up in twitter
my Karma is 100, if I freeze it, do I loose the 1 point? How often do i have to Plurk now?
I saw in another 100 Plurk Karma next to the nbr a cute emoticon of a pig, what is it??
any info on the above questions? thanks all in advance! :)
If you freeze your Karma you will lose one point. So if your Karma is at 100 now it will be at 99 when you freeze it.
You have to plurk at least once every 12 hours to maintain your Karma.
The pig emoticon next to the Karma number probably is part of the theme this member is using. The image possibly replaces the up/down arrow that indicates whether the Karma has recently gone up or down.
thank you Tina :)
one reason why Twitter beats Plurk is because the inteface given in Twitter is way better.
I agree that it’s a matter of taste. I like the Plurk interface much better.