I just recently got back from Blog World and Plurk got no love. I mean the term was almost non existent and there certainly wasn’t much discussion around it. Twitter is where everyone chooses to spend most of their time and I can see why.

Twitter is the biggest bar in town. If you’re going to go “get social” you’re going to twitter. If you aren’t at least including twitter in your list of spots; you’re going to miss most of the party. The number of people on twitter and on it a lot is staggering. Plurk is growing but it’s not the Goliath that is twitter.

What makes plurk a worthy competitor and something totally different besides the GUI? It’s Cliques. On twitter how am you going to talk to a “crew”? Presumably if you have lot’s of friends you’re going to have lot’s of “crews” and be a member of varying activity in all of them. Plurk allows you to chat with ease with a crew of 3 or your entire friends list totally off the public time-line. Imagine trying to generate a good yet still confidential(to some extent) discussion through only direct messaging?

Some would say you could coordinate through email or other networking sites. To that I say you’re right; you could. Thing with plurk is you don’t need to know / give away your email for basic conversation. It makes “being friends” a lot easier in every way.

For a while at Plurk cliques weren’t working properly. For whatever reason people stopped using it as much and my interest began to wane. Now that it’s back I’m seeing lot’s of productive as well as fun group private messages come through my cliques.

Bottom line is if you aren’t on Twitter (@Bloggeries) - Get on it. If you aren’t tapping into the stored “offline” online information pool and power of cliques - Get on it!

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

Basically if you get a lot of private plurks, most are group sent to you and 50+ other plurkers. Not replying isn’t required or expected from everyone. However if someone sends one EXCLUSIVELY to you; they probably expect / hoping for a direct reply.

The current problem is that these plurks sent just to you are being lost in the noise of all the others. Checking every private plurk is as logical as checking every single plurk on your timeline. This issue becomes increasingly problematic the more friends you have.

Proposed solution? Make private plurks that are just sent to one person a different color and/or make them always stay at the front of timeline before group ones until they are checked. This will give them the priority they deserve over the mass recipient ones.

I’ve started a plurk discussing the issue here.

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

It’s official … PlurkCAST’s are officially dead. However PlurkTalks has been created!

Basically Eric is off the grid and our friend KDFrawg has been running them solo for quite sometime now always generously mentioning Plurkable as part of the casts. I don’t blame Mike for deciding to change it to PlurkTalks… Really there isn’t much left of the original PlurkCasts. PlurkCasts were on talkshoe; Mike has since moved the platform to Stickam and has been doing everything for the last few months.

I’d like to thank KD for all the help and exposure he’s given to a) plurk b) plurkable. Also considering he’s doing everything and doing it alone; he might as well make his own version and go that route.

So it’s that time… Everything must come to an end and the PlurkCAST’s are no more. Be sure to check out Plurkiverse for further details.

Busy day or so in the plurkiverse for those of you that tune in daily. Looks like private plurks tab is back so the cliques can begin again and the interesting plurkers page has a Popular tab and most recent.

I decided to see how far I had fallen down the most viewed on interesting plurkers when to my surprise I saw a new tab! Turns out there is a popular tab now which well dictates the ~50 most popular plurkers. What I want to know what is what defines popular?

It can’t just be most followed as that’s already covered; I’m thinking it’s some sort of hybrid. I definitely would of thought the number of followers you have plays somewhat into the equation; it doesn’t seem to though. Maybe they have found a way to ratio the average number of replies per plurk? I’d really like to hear everyone’s thoughts on what the “popular” algorithm consists of.

The most recent tab at the bottom far right next to most responded may or may not of been there before. I am NOT known for paying attention to detail; my head is usually far in the clouds but I did just notice it. Not much a use except if your bored and or new and want to join a conversation quickly you can be sure that the people listed on most recent are probably still online. This could also be a great way to make new friends…

In lesser news but of greater importance to many I’m sure the private plurks tab is back. Sure sure you could check it on the mobile page but who remembers to do that? Heck many people forget to check even when it’s got it’s own proper tab on the line. What next plurk? How about making the private tab turn a color when you have a new private? Or what about a new color when there is a new private addressed ONLY to you? We all get many that are sent to everyone and if you don’t reply it’s no big deal; if someone sends one to you and only you it’s almost seen as rude not to reply or acknowledge. That is of course unless the person is a cyber stalker / can’t take a hint kinda guy and in that case ignoring is totally fine if not recommended!

That’s it for now; if you have any ideas on how the popular page is compiled please let us know in comments.

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

EDIT: I checked back on the popular page and everything had changed. Looks like it’s geo-targeted now. I only saw Canadians on the the list. I’m curious if it was like that all along or just recently changed. Would be cool if you could browse by country and one for international. Actually that would be cool for all current ratings. Something else of interest is it looks like there is room to add more features under this current layout for interesting plurkers and plurks.

Since it’s only plurkers reading this; here is the plurk as it obviously generates more conversation.

Looks like Alvin has been drinking his Innis & Gunn and brought about a new little tweak to the user interface (UI). The tweak is a new search box in the bottom right of the timeline. Some of you “old schoolerz” may remember the little magnified glass that was there previously. Now it’s jut a box that says “I love plurk” with a more straight forward “Search” written afterwards.

I’m glad to see this function back it’s always great to search your name and see what people are saying about you. It’s also helpful to search an interest of yours to find other plurkers who are also into it.

In case you don’t know who Alvin is he’s the genius behind plurk’s intuitive UI. If you really want to get to know the guy beyond the fact that he eats puppies I recommend you read his blog Daily Misery. Also while you’re there you may wish to also view Alvin’s position on why the interface scrolls the way it does. You can read it here and it’s called The Case of Left to Right

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

I was doing my usual plurk lurkin this morning and I noticed that my site ranked for “Plurk Administrator” so I plurked about it obviously then went into stats and noticed people using a few other plurk terms that my forum was ranking for.

Long story short in the search results I became aware of two lesser known Plurk fan sites worth visiting.They are both run by knorcedger and they are called Plurk Mania and onPlurk

Plurk Mania is very similar to the more well known Plurkerati. I’m not sure which one I like more; I definitely like how Plurk Mania organizes the information. Definitely worth checking out.

onPlurk is pretty cool as well it’s a place to bookmark your favorite plurks and discover new interesting plurks. I believe it’s using the PLIGG system which is what most Digg clones are using. This could be an interesting way to see what’s hot in the Plurkosphere if it really picks up. I’m not much for submitting to social media sites but I’m definitely one to read them.

The weird thing is having been on plurk almost 3 months I think this may be the first time I ever really visited these sites. This got me thinking I wonder how many others are out there?

If you know of some other incredibly plurky sites please post them in the comments here.

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

Just like the title says… Where haz Private Plurks gone?? I was online about a week ago when Nethead broke the news that new windows were appearing without the private plurk function. I had noticed something similar at the same time and when I refreshed really knew what he meant; I had no more private plurks button.

That being said it’s been a while now that they have been gone. Let’s get serious; social media is cool but the one of the points in friending someone is so you can talk to them privately. You don’t need to follow, fan, friend anyone to simply throw your $0.02 in their plurks. I think part of the reason social media is so popular is because with a simple friend request your not really friends but you are a distant acquaintance and if need be can send them a private note. Also somewhat related I think lot’s of hilarious plurks people don’t want to share with the world get sent through private plurks and if you have a few friends your bound to find some interesting ones.

I’ve been away from plurk for a while; actually just away from the computer. Doing things in my life, taking vacation and just enjoying an active summer lifestyle before the snow falls and we’re all trapped inside again. Last night I noticed that the private plurks were still not there so I decided to plurk about the fate of private plurks. Sure enough like anything in life there is always plan B.

Turns out they disabled it to ease the load on the servers. YES!! That’s a good sign that plurk is growing and let’s get serious this is summer in North America; it’s usually a slow time as everyone is out doing what I described I was doing in the last paragraph. If you want to check your private plurks simply go to the plurk mobile page and you can check them there. Thanks KDFrawg for explaining this to me.

Let’s hope they get private plurks back up in the near future and continue to grow. Sure I’m assuming they are growing but why not? It’s a sick user interface and should only be a matter of time until everyone uses it.

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

P.S Turns out I missed the plurkCAST, video PlurkCAST etc etc… If you want to know what happened last week check out Plurkiverse for now.