Don't Back Down

It's almost dangerous writing this as I do (in advance, I mean), because in so doing, I run the risk of having some of these things done by the time it actually gets published. One of the items - I'll tell you which in a minute - already had to be updated slightly from my original request, since it's already been fixed. I'm not complaining, mind you, as it means that Plurk is moving forward and continuing to roll out updates to the service in response to user requests. So here are mine.

First, let me say that I understand that the service is new. I've said that all along. I also understand that some of you don't necessarily like the service, and that's okay too. I'm just passing along some ideas for what I think would make things work even better, because quite frankly, I think it works pretty darn good, seeing as how it's only been around since January, and only in true live mode for the last ten days or so. Prior to that, it was on a development server, and it wasn't ready for the load that it's seen. Now, on with the list!

Drowning in a Sea of Noise

I'll actually start with the item that has already been addressed - somewhat. That is the ability to turn off some of the items in the timeline.

There is, as I'm sure you know, a bunch of noise on Plurk. This was addressed by an update that installed the mute button. For plurk threads that are not yours (that is, plurks that you respond to), you'll see a mute link at the top. For plurks that you start, you instead see edit and delete - so you can't mute them, and you will always see responses. I think this is a good design choice. If you don't want to see responses, delete it. Otherwise, you'll always be notified of responses.

In any case, if you no longer want to be notified, just click the mute link, at which point it changes to unmute. Click again to reverse the effect as needed. This is great, and drastically reduced the noise coming through Plurk. I suspect that it probably cut down greatly on the bandwidth of the site too. And not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it's not quite enough.

The reason being is that there are still a lot of plurks coming through, and you have to mute all of them. The one thing that is needed is a preference to set the default status of the mute. In other words, maybe I typically want to not be notified of most updates - I don't want to click mute all the time, so let me set it to off. Then, when I see a plurk thread that I'd like to keep up with, I'll click those to unmute them. It would be so much easier.

Having the mute is nice. But having a preference to set it would be even better. At the risk of turning into that guy, who is never happy, it would also be nice to have a feature whereby you could at a glance tell which plurks had already been muted. At the moment the only way to tell is by opening them and seeing the setting - so if I have a few minutes to spare, and I want to do a quick update, I have to open all the plurks to check. I probably don't need to do this if I have the preference - but as long as I don't, it's something to consider, because I'll want to make sure anything I don't want to follow is off, so I won't get updated about it later, you know?

Another interesting idea was floated by Peter, who wants to be able to use the mute, but to still be able to get updates from certain people. While he didn't mention anyone by name, this sounds an awful lot like the way Twitter is being used currently, so that you don't get notified of updates from people you don't follow. I'm not sure if I would use it or not, but frankly it sounds like a good option to have, and an easy thing to add to user preferences: Keep things the way they are now, mute all by default and update only those that you follow. I think that would cover about everyone. Of course, the naming convention needs work, but I'll leave that to someone else!

Help me Find Myself

Speaking of noise, there is one area where Twitter excels where Plurk falls short. If someone mentions me in a thread and I'm not following that person, on Twitter, I'll see it pop up, because my name was mentioned - commonly called an "@ reply" or something to that effect (putting an @ sign in front of my name). This doesn't happen on Plurk. On Plurk, you have to be a fan or a friend in order to see the thread on your timeline.

I'm not exactly sure of how to implement this one, because of the way that the timeline is constructed, but if your name is mentioned in someone's plurk and you don't follow them, it would be nice if you could find out about it - that way you could then follow them. It's like a built-in friend-finder.

When plurks are saved, there is an automated scan for @ replies, so that they become linked, so I have to think that there is something happening here already. Maybe the answer is to add a function to this routine so that a notification is sent to the user's private plurks, letting them know that they've been mentioned, and a link to the plurk, but only if they aren't following that plurk. The load on the system would increase, but it shouldn't be by a horrible amount (guessing a bit here).

Help Me Find You

Another Plurk user put together the Plurk Lurker, a Google custom search, which will help you out to some degree in searching for Plurk users. But it's not quite the same. You can also do a number of imports, but the most popular one is probably the Twitter Import. It's nice to have these tools, but still, an integrated friend finder would be a nice feature to have.

And if you happen to have a bunch of friends, the window to display them can only reliably display 25 or so pages. If you get more than that, it gets wonky real fast. This is actually a bug fix more than a feature request, because it just doesn't work. There needs to be better pagination controls. Of course, I don't have nearly that many friends (or fans), so it doesn't matter to me - but some people do, so this is for them.

Speaking of Those Private Plurks

You can, of course, view your private plurks. But you don't know they are there. There has got to be a way to notify users that they exist, without having to check them. Obviously there is a notification function (you get emails if you have friend requests). But maybe down by the calendar you can raise a flag or something, letting you know that you need to check the private plurks. Something - otherwise you're just sitting there and the private plurks are stacking up. Pretty please?

In fact, it looks like this may have been updated, as just today I received a private plurk (a response to a private plurk of mine), and it came up in my timeline. So if it's fixed, nevermind. If not, I'll still say that this needs some work. But that's one of the things I love about Plurk. It's constantly evolving!

And Along Comes the API

While it's not an official API, long-time Plurk user Ryan Lim is on the verge of releasing the RLPlurkAPI, which will allow access to Plurk via PHP. It's coming, people, it's coming! In fact, it's here! Though perhaps lightly documented, you can now access Plurk from outside the service (though it does take some doing). I'm working on a Perl version now, and I know others are doing similar things as well.

If you are still not on Plurk, follow this link and see what it's all about!