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PlurkCAST - 06-08-2008

Posted in PlurkCAST | August 7th, 2008

Although Eric and I missed it, once again KDFrawg held down the fort and ran an entertaining and informative PlurkCAST.

Click below to listen to the entire recording.

Coming up most likely next week will be some more Plinks and other bloggeries I’ve been thinking of. Why wasn’t Eric there? He’s part of a political movement gathering major steam. Check his plurk’s for further details.

Stay tuned for more things Plurk,

- Rob

EDIT: Turns out Amix was listening in. So Amir… Does this mean we can pick your brain on an upcoming episode sometime? ;)

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@ Replying Just Got Easier

Posted in Plurky Stuff | August 4th, 2008

Just last night Plurk released the new community badges and made some interface tweaks. Woke up this morning and the A-Team is at it again. The latest upgrade is the ability to reply to someone via their info overlay. I really like this feature.

Plurk Responses from Info Overlay

When I first got in to twitter, (B.P - Before Plurk) I never got into using 3rd party apps. One of my biggest “pet peeves” about twitter was that I had to type in the persons user name each time I wanted to reply. Some people have REALLY LONG or complicated names and on top of that you have to spell it 100% correct or it won’t have the desired effect. This is coming from someone who types well over 100 words a minute; I wonder what this was like for the 2 finger typists and everyone in-between?

Now you can simply click next to the persons name until the down arrow appears; click that and choose to do an @ reply. Doesn’t get much easier than that!

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

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New Community Badges and UI Tweak

Posted in Plurky Stuff | August 4th, 2008

I was going to go to the bar but somehow here I am blogging about Plurk. First thing I noticed when I routinely clicked “profile” and checked what was new were the new icons below karma. After seeing the community badges, I noticed the star appears there as well and no longer on the avatar on the timeline. I immediately started a plurk to see if anyone had noticed any other tweaks to the user interface; nothing.


Curious what a Plurk Community site is? At first I assumed it’s the “Unofficial Plurk Blog’s” listed on Plurk’s Official Blog; however Amix set the record straight. I’d assume qualifying websites are those that have really embraced plurk and are dedicated solely to it and have been for some time. It’s cool to be recognized by the designers; not aware of any other networks where the admins show appreciation like this. I’m curious what’s going to happen now… Everyone who received a badge the first go around is genuinely a plurk enthusiast as most of these sites were started within a month of the initial “Plurksplosion” into the scene in early June. Where will the line be drawn that determines if a site is eligible or not? I think largely it has to do with the definition of “community”; which typically involves some sort of defined purpose and level of activity. Will this create more work as the requests start flooding plurk’s inbox? Will this turn off people who for whatever reasons tried to get the badge but got rejected?

I’m undecided on the badge idea and my prediction is that the vast majority of plurker’s won’t care about or notice the new badges. I also believe a small group will make a big deal out of it being unfair while many more will apply for the badge whether they qualify or not.

I think this recent user interface could be a great transition towards a system geared more at the casual once a day or so plurker. (We addicts aren’t going anywhere; we love the platform) In this system the badges, stars and other symbols of participation levels(even karma) are visible but not the center of attention. Most plurkers won’t get a star, a badge or reach nirvana so why make them front and center like the star used to be and karma still kinda is? Where plurk goes from here is anyone’s guess but I’m looking forward to it.

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

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Broken Karma & Plurk Oddities

Posted in Plurky Stuff | August 2nd, 2008

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!


Broken Karma

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.

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PlurkCAST Summary: 07-30-2008

Posted in PlurkCAST | July 31st, 2008

EricOdom and KDFrawg put together another entertaining and informative plurkCAST yesterday. These two work well together and have good online persona’s. To think they only met a few weeks ago; on plurk! Think about yourself for a minute; how many people that you now interact with daily did you meet on plurk? Probably quite a few.

As per usual there was lot’s of discussions and interesting points brought up by several plurkers on a wide array of topics. I could go into details about the conversation but instead I invite you to listen to the podcast below.

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

- Rob

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Final July PlurkCAST TODAY!!

Posted in PlurkCAST | July 30th, 2008

It’s Wednesday and it’s 1:15 PM Central time… which means that Plurkable.com is just hours away from yet another PlurkCAST!

Join PlurkCAST host Eric Odom and KDFrawg as we discuss the month of July in review for the Plurk community, and talk about all the Plurk.

As usual, the show kicks off at 5:00 PM Eastern Time, 4:00 Central. You can join us live here on the official PlurkCAST show page.

Today’s Topics:
-Plurk Mobile Upgrade
-Plurkshops.com
-Plurkpix.com
-Needy Karma
-7/29 Plinks List

Plus many more topics as well as live calls taken. If you have something you want to talk about on the show, be sure to call in and be ready to come on live.

Phone Number: (724) 444-7444
Call ID: 21651

Or CLICK HERE for the online show site.

Tags: ,
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Plinks - 07-29-2008

Posted in Plinks | July 29th, 2008

I just realized that the plinks haven’t been updated in over a month; time to change that. I also just realized that I should be more careful as I had this 95% done then by accident clicked the X on my firefox tab without noticing. The horror!

Interesting Plurk Statistics - This was the catalyst for this.

I don’t care for these statistics much but they are there none the less. We all know Alexa and some of the other metrics used are flaky. They are still some of the best horrible metrics we have to use.

Welcome Back Plurker

Written by KDFrawg and company over at Plurkiverse. Give it a listen and I believe it’s the very first Plurk inspired song ever produced? Wow!

Updates Out For Plurk Mobile

I have never used plurk mobile but have heard early reports that it was clunky and cumbersome to use. Hopefully these new updates will make mobile plurking easier. Eventually everyone will be plurking from a mobile I believe. (If they own one that is).

Plurk Tips & Tricks 1 - Name Linking

I was going to say pretty basic and mainly for someone totally new to plurk. Then I saw the creator drag a name into the box and erase most of the URL and add the @. I had no clue you could do it like that. Being a fast typer I’ll probably just freestyle it but it’s good to know; just learned something new.

Plurk is Conversation Centered - Twitter is User Centered

Interesting bloggery about how Plurk is about conversations while twitter is about users. I liked how Jane mentioned she’s never had a conversation on twitter more than 2 replies deep. Come to think of it I don’t have many of that caliber or much further. It’s simply too difficult and half the time I have no clue which tweet they are replying to anyways unless the explain. Problem with explaining is it takes most of your 140 characters and leaves no room for the actual reply; I digress.

Plurk Vs Twitter - Not the same, here is why

Thoughts on the differences between Plurk and Twitter from features to behavioral patterns by Tamar.

That’s about it for now in terms of plinks. Turns out the first version I wrote of this had a few more plinks but no summaries. Looking at this finished piece I like the summaries and will continue to try and include brief ones for each plink I list. I guess everything really does happen for a reason?

Tomorrow there should be some new bloggeries as well as one about the PlurkCAST.

Stay tuned for more things plurk,

-Rob

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