Twitter vs Plurk
With all the downtime problems Twitter has been experiencing lately, it could be just a matter of time before there is a mass exodus to another service. My guess is it wouldn’t take much to trigger the exodus — at least among the early-adopting tech crowd.
Because the microblogging space is so nascent, a departure of even a few of the key tweeters like @leolaporte, @JasonCalacanis @kevinrose, and @Scobleizer, could be disastrous for Twitter and effective stall the rocketsled that has been twitter of late.
Some thought FriendFeed would be the Twitter killer, but FriendFeed is different from Twitter. It serves a different purpose. See my post on FriendFeed vs Twitter.
A new service called Plurk, however, could be the ship frustrated tweeters jump to — not to mention, highly followed Twitterers like Leo Laporte and Veronica Belmont invited their Twitter followers to join them on Plurk. Don’t be surprised to see a huge surge in Plurk’s traffic in the coming days.
The MEDIAdeluge is here:
- The Inquisitr, Today’s Hot Meme Comes To Us From Plurk
- ParisLemon, Plurk is Both Pretty and Pretty Cool
- The Next Web, Are you already Plurking? — Actually that isn’t the right question.
- /Message, Plurk: Looking In All The Wrong Places
- Mark Evans, Taking the Plurk Plunge!
- Mashable, I Like Plurk Better Than Twitter, But Should I Even Bother?
Plurk is a slick new microblogging platform. VentureBeat calls it Twitter meets FriendFeed.
It does not have all the add-on services like Twitter and currently, there does not seem to be mobile Plurking, which is a severe limitation.
Here is my take on a Plurk FAQ.
What is Plurk?
A Twitter killer? I’m not sure Twitter actually needs to be killed. At this point, a reasonable alternative will do.
How does Plurk work?
Plurk works like Twitter, but with a much nicer. ajaxy UI.
There’s a safe plurking habits guide to help new users understand how to make Plurk time “more productive and secure.”
What’s my timeline?
Plurk shows posts in a horizontal time-line. Frankly, I’m shocked more sites don’t take advantage of this kind of layout. It is slick.
What’s a plurk?
a plurk = a tweet
What are qualifiers?
Plurk expands on Facebook’s “is” by adding qualifiers to posts. Qualifiers include, feels, thinks, loves, was, etc.
What is a clique?
Plurk allows for definable subgroups. A clique is a way for users to define a smaller audience of “friends” such that users can send plurks to only the friends who need to be notified. This goes a long way toward helping microbloggers post the kinds of information salient to the audience they are talking to. see more on this in my post on the conversational web.
Will Plurk be the Twitter killer? Time will tell. Plurk is getting hammered with traffic right now and while performance has slowed a bit, I have not been effected by outages. I have not seen any images of tweety birds pulling a whale out of the ocean — an all too common sight on Twitter.
