There has been a trend recently in the blogosphere towards so-called micro-blogs. There was even a major news story recently about how a UC Berkeley Graduate used Twitter to free himself and his translator from an Egyptian prison. Twitter has no doubt become a household name in the past year or so and even companies like CNN are beginning to use it to break news from their reporters. Twitter is nice and useful, you can simply use SMS to post to your Twitter account, but is all that?

There have been a number of Twitter clones spring up including Pownce (which is actually better designed and has more features than Twitter). The most recent and perhaps the biggest challenge to Twitterdom is Plurk. At first blush the name just sounds ridiculous. (Of course what is a Twitter?) As it turns out there is actually a reason why the designers chose the word Plurk:
People + Lurk = Plurk
People + Work = Plurk
Peace, Love, Unity, Respect, Karma = Plurk

Whatever you decide, Plurk is a really cool service. When asked to review this service I had never actually heard of it (I know, shock!) so I went over and checked it out. Signing up literally took just a few seconds and there was none of that pesky “Verify your email” business. I hate having to wait around for an email to verify that I actually signed up. How many times have I been waiting for an email and simply got bored and never came back. Plurk has given me that sense of “instant gratification”. I was immediately impressed with the way the site was designed. By using a horizontal layout rather than a vertical one, it seemed to me at least, to be the most natural thing in the world. The second thing that really got my attention is the attention to detail that was taken in the design and layout of the page. The colors are very pleasing to the eye and I really love the “prettiness” of the site. It is very inviting and makes full use of the web 2.0 features!
Plurk doesn’t just work on your home computer but now you can even use it on your mobile phone. Granted the layout isn’t as nice (mainly because of the limitations of mobile browsers) but it is still very intuitive and easy to use (http://plurk.com/m). Unlike Twitter though is the current inability to use SMS to post plurks. This is a serious limitation and one that I really hope they address in the near future.
Another very nice feature is the ability to group your friends into cliques with the ability to limit each clique to certain aspects of your timeline. You can send plurks to specific cliques or to your entire friend list. Also the more friends you invite the more appreciation that Plurk shows in the form of stars. If you sing up 10 friends you get a silver star attached to your avatar. 25 friends get you a gold star and 50 friends get you a red star. This is a feature that is lacking in other social networking groups. I have a couple hundred friends in Facebook but no little stars!
If you want to add an image, picture, video, even a YouTube video to your plurk you are able to. The interface determines if you have given a URL to a graphic or video and automatically generates a thumbnail image for you. One feature I’m not sure I will get used to or not is “qualifiers”. When you go to site via your cell phone or your PC and you start to enter your latest plurk you are presented with qualifiers such as “Thinks, Likes, Hates, Loves, Wants, Wishes, Hopes” etc. These are also color-coded to represent moods. This is interesting but what if you don’t want to use a qualifier? Fortunately the “A-Team”, or so they call their designers, thought of that and allow you to “freestyle”. Another feature that I think is a bit outdated is karma. You get more karma by using the site, adding plurks, inviting friends, etc. They have added a twist to karma by “unlocking” various features based upon how high your karma gets. We all start out as “You are in the state of creation” and the people with the most karma get “You have reached Plurk Nirvana!” It might be awhile before I reach Plurk Nirvana, but one thing is certain—I want to plurk more!

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Tags: Microblogging, plurk, social site, twitter