Don't Back Down

The problems with Twitter are almost legendary. But a funny thing happened last week during their latest bout. As the popular Adobe AIR application Twhirl advised users to reduce requests to somewhere around a third of the normal rate so that users wouldn't experience errors on Twitter, another social application started to be mentioned. A lot.

Suddenly, users everywhere were talking about Plurk. Some people say that it came from Leo Laporte. Some say it was Scoble (evidence such as this tweet seem to indicate it was Leo). I think that I heard it first from Mack Collier, but I'll be honest - it could have been any number of people. Mack was likely just the most vocal that I heard (and he could have heard it from Leo, Scoble or any number of others himself. The fact is, Plurk started to emerge at just the right time, and now I'm convinced. It was just a day or so earlier that Plurk actually started to ramp things up.

Where Twitter Falls Short

For me, Twitter has always had problems. The first problem I've had is the linearity (and I may or may not have just invented that word, but it describes the effect well, so bear with me). You post a short message about what you are doing, and someone may or may not answer. If they do, you have to then track down your answer. If someone uses your name, and spells it correctly, you get it. If they don't - on both counts - you don't. Some people like that, which is great.

It's sort of like the network effect, but loosely coupled at best. Typically the network effect increases as more people use the service, and while a lot of people use Twitter, it's often tough to tell just how many people use it. Sure, you have a few people listed in the sidebar of your profile, but it's not like you're actually talking to them - it's a stream of information, not a real back-and-forth flow. If you follow dozens, hundreds or thousands, it's a monstrous amount of information. Not Plurk. It's the network effect on steroids. Every user actually increases the utility of the service in a very real way.

If you get fifty responses to your query (on Twitter), no one can ever hope to keep up with that flow - often including yourself. because data is threaded based on name, not on the message itself. Notice how the "in response to" is based on the latest tweet, not on the actual status that was posted. Only if you follow everyone in that flow can you get every response. That does encourage you to follow everyone, but that often just increases the noise further, making the problem worse.

And you generally don't know that there are others to follow, which makes it a bit difficult to know that you need to follow them in the first place! Plurk addresses this by focusing less on the individuals and more on the conversation itself, something Twitter has completely ignored to date (and this doesn't mention the stability problems of the service).

How Plurk Solves the Problem

What Plurk has done is to lay the focus on the conversation. You post your short message (called a plurk, which is probably an unfortunate name, but what can you do?), and then replies are stored with that plurk. Like Twitter, you can delete your message, but unlike twitter, you can also edit it after posting. You can also choose from a variety of verbs like is, loves and wishes and all of your plurks are posted to your timeline, as well as everyone you follow.

In this regard, Plurk is similar to Twitter. But what differs is that you have a bit of a funhouse effect (something that many people in Plurk have mentioned). It's a splattering of thoughts thrown up at random. They are actually dated, but it can seem a bit daunting at first. You can scroll forward and back, rather than a continuous stream. If you want to see what everyone loves, click the one of the people who loves something (where it says loves) and those plurks will be highlighted. If you want to see plurks from a specific person, click that person's avatar (clicking their name shows you only their plurks), and those will be highlighted in the overall stream.

You can send plurks to yourself, or to a specific person, or even to a group of people as well by selecting privacy options. It's like a chat room right in the midst of the public timeline, which is a very cool feature. I've seen people - including myself - ask for a chat room, but with Plurk, you don't need a chat room. Carry on a private chat right in the same timeline with the use of the private plurks!

There is also the ability to gain (and even lose) karma, but frankly, I don't particularly care about this facet of the service. Mostly because no one knows what karma means. Darren Rowse of Problogger has mentioned how it may be calculated by looking at the top 10 users. I've looked at it. Mine is currently above 20, but I haven't participated much, and I can't seem to find the correlation. I've also seen users mention that theirs has gone down. If that happens, do you lose the benefits that you've gained? I don't know. So I don't worry about it. The karma-tracking bot has higher karma than I do, and so I don't know why I should. It'll work out.

What is This All About? You're Leaving Twitter?

Yes, that's correct. I am.

What I have found is that in the last few days that I have been test-driving Plurk, the conversations are just incredible. There is a bunch of noise, to be sure. Lots of people playing around. Lots of people asking questions that are answered in the FAQ. But that will change. There will come a time when things mature. Maybe there will never be the same level of participation as there is on Twitter. But you know what? I don't care.

In this limited test-run of Plurk, the conversations have been so much more useful on Plurk, that it's become apparent to me that Twitter is a complete waste of my time. Twitter, while there is a separate application, takes up space on my desktop (with Twhirl). No offense to the developers, as I think Twhirl is an outstanding app. But I always have a browser open, so I'll just keep another tab open for Plurk and I can uninstall Twhirl, and save some hard disk space, some memory and some screen real estate. On top of all that, I get more conversation to boot. It's like win-win-win-win.

As to Twitter, I'll keep the account open, I'm just not going to use it unless someone has to talk to me there. But the features of Plurk are so much better, it will be my primary method for communication of that sort. Just like other IM channels that I don't typically use, Twitter will be relegated to the back burner. If you want to contact me via "IM", use Plurk.

Plurk Needs to Do Some Work

They aren't quite there. Since the traffic is growing, you'll see some growing pains along the way. I've seen a few errors, but Twitter is seeing more than ever. You'd think with the competition stepping it up like Plurk has been this week, Twitter would figure out the problem. They haven't. If they both have problems, I'd rather have Plurk at this point - a better service and fewer errors. Twitter is just down like crazy, and the service doesn't even compare. As an aside: It's funny to see people who think Plurk isn't worth exploring, and they spend all sorts of time on Plurk. Anyway...

I like the Plurk interface. It's colorful and probably annoying to some, but the features it gives you are pretty cool. There is a mobile interface for those who need something more like Twitter. At the bottom of every plurk is a plurk page link, which gives you a way to link to your plurks (something like the individual status page for Twitter, but you get the replies, as well as a place to reply to the plurk. Very nice.

But for those who don't like these options, a full-fledged API would be nice. I'm sure this is coming. Services like ping.fm can hook into Plurk, so it has to be there (somewhere) - it's just not documented. I'd like to see an option like Twitterfeed for Plurk. But I'm sure it will be there before long.

The absolutely most useful thing would be a way to search for people. Ideally just by name, but then to be able to have expanded search, say by city or state, or even by keyword, would be even better. Then to add to this by allowing multiple adds (adding multiple friends at a time) would be just awesome. If you want to add one at a time, it's great. But adding dozens of friends is a really slow process, you know?

A really nice feature would be able to see your "at" replies (when someone mentions your Plurk username, such as @jayseae), in a a thread you're not really following. On Twitter, you'll see this, just because it has your username in it. Not so on Plurk. Speaking of which, there doesn't ever seem to be any notification that you have private plurks waiting - which is a bit annoying, though you can toggle them on and off at any time. That would help too, say a flag of some sort. But it's a minor issue.

What is interesting is that Plurk, unlike Twitter, actually announces scheduled maintenance. And, somewhat like regular clockwork, the maintenance started at about 9:35pm, showing a page that said that the upgrade would be complete, and Plurk back up, by 10pm. Unfortunately they didn't quite make it. It was actually about 10:50 before things came back online. But they did announce it in advance, which was nice of them.

So Now That You're Convinced, How Do You Join?

That's the easy part. Just follow the link. One word of warning: If you're already on Plurk, that link will log you out. I don't know why that is, it just does. That's right: Even if you've been logged in for days or weeks, it logs you out. Very strange behavior indeed. If you don't want that to happen, my user name, like just about everywhere else, is jayseae.