Broken Karma & Plurk Oddities

Recently most die hard plurkers noticed when they woke up that Karma had stopped updating. Essentially the karma system was broken or at least stalled. Of course there was a million plurks about it; some being thrilled, others frustrated, upset or annoyed and everything in between. As the day progressed and the issue continued I kind of liked knowing that I would not be penalized for not plurking. Also I wonder how much less noise everyone’s time-line would have if people only generated new plurks when they generally have something interesting to share?

I thought I’d mention this as it was the night before Karma froze that I decided I wasn’t going to bother adding a generic “Good night Plurk zzzzZZZzzz” and it was awesome to wake up to the same score I left with. If I really wanted to increase my karma I could of posted; but to not post and feel see no repercussions was pretty cool. I barely use twitter anymore but one thing I really do like is that if I’ve logged in today or two weeks ago it’s just glad to have you back.

Eventually the A-team became aware of the issue and as per usual found a remedy shortly thereafter. One incident that happened during this karma freeze/stall/whatever was that some people’s Karma was actually changed; below is an actual screen shot of someone who thought they hit the jackpot!

How would you feel in the morning if you woke up to a clean 99.99 karma? I am just glad syktek mentioned it and that I got a screen shot. I think it’s going to be a little while before WendyKnits most likely hits it!

While we’re on the topic of “karma oddities” I’m going to attach another image which happened after Plurk had it’s “New Shoes” for those of you that remember. “New Shoes” was a recent update that originally state ~1 hour took most of the day. This could explain the large jump seen in the screen shot below but I’m not totally convinced. After the new shoes were successfully on some people had increased; others decreased so I don’t think everyone went down. Either way within ~12 hours of the event I logged in and to my surprise saw +1 Karma. Most of us know that once you hit 60 it typically climbs in intervals of ~0.09% and sadly drops in ~0.09-0.15%. What’s weirder: going up 1 or going up 1 to exactly 66.66?

Apart from this Plurk has been running rather well lately; I’m interested to see where it goes in the next few months. Next time they update their karma algorithm it would be great if they started viewing plurk through the eyes of a casual, average internet user. If Plurk is to stick around and hit critical mass it will be highly dependent on the group just mentioned. Early adopting, always online, tech evangelists by no means represent the majority of the social media / networking crowd.

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

P.S Be sure to tune into our weekly PlurkCAST, every Wednesday at 5PM EST.