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

NOW do you see why being Plurky is so much better?

At 10:00 AM yesterday morning I joined Plurk. A few minutes earlier I had commented on a Sphinn story about how I was sticking with Twitter and didn’t much like the Plurk interface. Surprisingly, it didn’t take more than fifteen minutes to A) become increasingly frustrated with Twitter outages, and B) notice replies to my first few Plurks.

I found it interesting how quick dialog takes place within individual Plurk threads on the timeline, and several hours later I was whipping through Plurk like I’d been Plurking for years. It was at this point that I realized… I was hooked.

Twitter’s Biggest Enemy is… Twitter
Two things have happened with Twitter over the past few weeks that have helped me decide to spend more time Plurking. First, Twitter has been down FAR too often. Last night I went an hour and a half without access, and the weekend before I couldn’t get in via my Blackberry for hours on end. When I want to Tweet, I want to Tweet. If I can’t, I want another way to communicate. Twitter just hasn’t been there for me so I must look in other directions.

Secondly, Plurkers have been using Twitter to market their Plurk accounts, as well as the Plurk movement in general. In fact, I never would have heard of Plurk would it not have been for Twitter.

Basically what was happening is that Twitter was down so much that when it came up all I could see in my stream were tweets about Twitter being down and everyone trying Plurk instead.

So, I finally set up my Plurk account and began Plurking. I’ve checked my Tweet stream as often as possible, but it’s been down more than up lately, so I’m finding Twitter less and less valuable with each new day. Plurk, however, is quickly becoming a thriving community with far more features and the ability to actually Plurk something when it comes to mind.

Sorry Twitter… you had me, but now I’m gone.

Plurk Hard,
-Eric