The Real Secret to Plurk's Appeal over Twitter »
There are all sorts of reasons that you might like Plurk and dislike Twitter - or, as is often the case, the other way around.
A number of people - notably the Twitterati - will argue that Plurk doesn't have an API, or it's too colorful, or it's like a funhouse. Whatever. Pick your reason. It doesn't really matter. There is one thing that sets Plurk apart from Twitter, and one thing only. Yes, there are many smaller reasons, but there is one very significant point that most people seem to push under the rug, to try and ignore, but it's the point that is staring everyone in the face, and that the refuse to accept.
Plurk is about the conversation. It's about the relationship. Twitter allows you to distance yourself, while Plurk does not. It's as simple as that.
It is absolutely true that Plurk has lot of colors. It is also true that it can seem like it has a certain funhouse quality. I won't argue that, because it does. But please - you're telling me that you can't keep up with fifty or a hundred responses on Plurk, while you can keep up with two or three times as many in Twitter? Not a chance. The difference is that in Twitter, people have become detached from the conversation, making it easier to tune it out. On Plurk, that's not as easy to do. The notification that you have responses - not everyone, but you specifically - and that your karma is going up or down as a result of it (well, that it may be doing so) means that you want to look, and keep looking.
Witness the recent spate of users who rush to services like hellotxt and ping.fm. Do they allow you to keep up with your responses? Absolutely not. They make it easier for you to keep up with posting your status to multiple services, and your responses be damned. That doesn't help the conversation. It helps you.
As I mentioned earlier, even people who don't like Plurk spend a ton of time there. It's my opinion not that people don't like Plurk. They don't like what Plurk represents. It's a complete waste of time. At the moment, anyway. Maybe it will change, and maybe it won't. But the service itself offers a wonderul opportunity for us to get back into the conversation, and stop ignoring one another.
I'm certain that Plurk needs to be managed better than Twitter. Even the marvelous waynesutton, who rose in six days from nowhere to the top 10 plurker list, has decided that perhaps he has too many friends on the service, and thinks a change may be in order. But that doesn't mean that it can't be done.
It just take us some work to do so, and for something that many people have been using for a week or less, I think we may still have a ways to go. What do you think? Surely we haven't come so far that we have completely forgotten how to interact with one another, have we?
Comments (7)
One thing I don't like about Plurk is that I can't seem to filter out replies to Plurks from people I don't care about. For example, I follow Leo Laporte, and I'd like to know what he's Plurking, as well as what my friends' replies to his Plurks, but I don't care about the hundreds of other replies he gets and don't want to be notified every time there's a new one.
With Twitter, the only time I see a reply to a Tweet is when I'm following both the original poster and the replier. Makes it easier to follow someone who is popular.
Posted by Peter R. Wood | June 10, 2008 7:57 AM
Hi Peter -
I definitely agree that there are things that Plurk has room to improve, and offering filters for getting rid of some data, as well as the ability to get more data (such as seeing places that your username has been mentioned where you don't follow someone) are just a couple of those places.
At the same time, I don't follow Leo, but there are a number of times I've been in similar circumstances and I've seen replies from people that I don't follow, and I never would have seen them on Twitter for that very reason - but they say something interesting, and I end up with a new, useful resource.
The one thing I'd really like to see is the ability to effectively kill a conversation - for instance the dozens of people who started talking about the new iPhone yesterday. I really didn't need to see it more than once, and then update after update started coming in. If I could have marked them all as "no more updates", it would have saved loads of time!
Posted by Chad Everett | June 10, 2008 8:15 AM
"I've seen replies from people that I don't follow, and I never would have seen them on Twitter for that very reason - but they say something interesting, and I end up with a new, useful resource."
I guess it's just that I find these responses a waste of time more often than I find them useful or interesting, and I don't care to spend my time filtering through the "me too LOL" cruft to find the jewels. Luckily, other people will do that for me. :-)
Posted by Peter R. Wood | June 10, 2008 8:58 AM
I agree that there's a lot of mess in there, but much of it comes in entire threads that are useless - which is why I'd like an "ignore thread" option in Plurk. And I think that when you do find a thread that is interesting, you can find good commentary from people you'd never see otherwise - something that doesn't happen on Twitter. But ultimately, it's what tool works for you. Twitter for me just wasn't happening. And as I understand it, it isn't really working much for anyone at the moment... :)
Posted by Chad Everett | June 10, 2008 2:18 PM
I'm try most new services to see who's there and start, buid and maintain relationships
For instance, there is not much I like about MySpace, but I try to answer my mail there, and respond to people trying to connect with me.
The technology you talk about about is cool.. but do you really feel there is a better COMMUNITY?
So far, I'm not feeling it.
Posted by Warren Whitlock | June 10, 2008 3:18 PM
Hi Warren -
I'll agree with you on MySpace - though I have an account, I don't think I've ever done anything there!
As to Plurk (and Twitter), I'll say that I've felt more community in the 10 (+/-) days on Plurk than I did in the four months of real use I gave Twitter (I actually had an account much longer). To me, this says something about how Plurk encourages the conversation.
Today, for instance, there was a comment from MackCollier about the "threading" offered by Twitter. Everyone knows it isn't really threading - Twitter just replies to the most recent tweet in that persons timeline, which sometimes is good, sometimes it isn't. Even Mack, a regular Twitter user, had trouble going back to find his way through the conversation.
Plurk overcomes that limitation and allows people to focus on the message, not the medium. It removes the technology from the equation, and in that sense, it's very real at fostering a community. At the moment, the community is very much in flux, but the more people who realize what it has to offer, and embrace what can be gained from it, the more that it will grow into something very real and very vibrant. I hope that you - and others - stick around to try it out.
Thanks for dropping in!
Posted by Chad Everett | June 10, 2008 3:36 PM
Plurk seems like a whole lot of fun.. provided you are engaged with the right people and on a meaningful topic.
But that's true of many networking sites.
What is unigque about Twitter is the ability to have those very short disconnected thought conversations.
I agree that they aren't near as deep as a discussion on a blog comment thread, emails between friends, phone calls or lest we forget, REAL WORLD meetups.
I think the mistake is in thinking that just because there is one great place to meet up, another one has to go away. It comes from our inability to imagine how we will keep up.
We won't keep up. Social networking is like a river of data. You can go and drink, play or live in the river.. but never think about using it up.
Posted by Warren Whitlock | June 10, 2008 5:05 PM