Since I started working with Mashable I have been in-the-know of all the latest start-ups and new social networking sites. I may not write about or review all of them but I am certainly introduced to many that I had not heard of before.
Three days ago I came across Plurk, a site that, well, is very interesting to say the least. When I first saw it I did not understand it and did not give much time towards investigating further. All I saw were small updates that were posted on some horizontal timeline.
Two days went by and I completely forgot about Plurk. Then yesterday all I saw on Twitter was chatter about Plurk. I was surprised that it was being talked about so much! After hearing that Scoble had blogged about it and both Leo Laporte and Veronica Belmont had mentioned it, I went to go take a second look.
I began "chatting" and mentioned to all my Twitter friends that I had arrived. What ensued was a two-hour long addiction to Plurk. I could not take my eyes off it.
But what exactly is Plurk, you ask?
Many people who were trying it for the first time last night described it as: "Whack-A-Mole with a mouse," "AJAX porn," and "Public AIM on mushrooms."
I think the last one fits best. I tweeted last night that basically, "Plurk is public instant messenger, where any1 can jump into a chatbox. The result = billions of chats. Overwhelming."
That's all it is. Twitter updates that turn into huge discussions.
Plurk refreshes very quickly and doesn't fail AS MUCH. (The screenshots below show the errors I ran into during my two-hour immersion).
Of course, last night there was a huge growth in the amount of users, most being Twitterers who heard from word-of-mouth that they should try it out and also who had no where else to go when Twitter went on a 3-hour shutdown.
Plurk had many errors and small mistakes, but overall it worked perfectly.
Perhaps too perfectly.
After gaining speed on Plurk, getting the hang of how to navigate all the chats and updates, and getting new friends I realized that there would be no way for me to ever use the service simply because there could be no keeping up with it. It's too fast for me. There's too much going on.
If all your friends can comment indefinitely on any one of your updates, it just seems to be impossible to be able to manage that amount of content. So after two hours with Plurk, I said my goodbye's and logged off.
I will probably not be returning to Plurk (or very sporadically) until I see that an overwhelming amount of people switch to the site or that it proves to be more useful than Twitter from a communication standpoint.
What I'm thinking right now:
Plurk is great for chatting -- especially if you're bored on a Sunday night, like most people were on June 1 seeing that Twitter was down and all -- Not so great for social networking.
(But, you never know, things may change).
Posts
4 comments:
I've been toying with all these sites, plus Pownce, for a few weeks now, also with work/business in mind. The truth is that they all suffer from random outages and glitches. So they are fun but I can't depend on them for 'real' communication - with colleagues, for example. E-mail is dull, but far more reliable. Then again, all the IM engines drop out for no particular reason just when you need 'em. Google Mail was down for a bit today.
My question: how long will it be before all these multiplying and breeding 'me-too' services congeal around a market leader than we can all rely on? I can't stand entering my name and age into so many Web 2.0 profiles :)
I have been using plurk for the past few days. When I first looked at it, I thought it was cute and instantly began trying to find the practical features we are all so used to on twitter. I gave up and just embraced the fun and entertainment value it had. Then something great happened, it actually proved itself to be a great community. I have been able to connect with friends and users, and even get feedback on my own projects like http://lifestream.fm. So i have been praising plurk on twitter (with it's constant outs), pownce (where the constant white pages of doom are starting to get to me), on plurk (where now that people are flocking there is having trouble itself), and on my work blog. I love plurk. I would suggest hanging on to it, even if just as a twitter backup. But I certainly think it is more than just a chat alternative.
Yes tinythoughts (how modest you are - was inspirationalthoughts already taken?) I too got the white screen of death on Pownce today. We can't expect miracles of a free service, but we do! That's what the internet leads us to expect, as our access to it trends towards 'free'.
Google charges $50 a year for guaranteed email, and not many would pay that for twitter, especially if you had to pay for them all! I did pay for Pownce, mainly because I like the team and I wanted the kudos of the 'Pro' badge. That really is sad.
What is the answer? Do we just sit tight until they get bought by Google? Hold on... they own Jaiku!!!
You totally nailed Plurk. As you said 'it's an instant messenger' not a social media site. It was fun to try out, but I definitely won't be migrating from Twitter to it any time soon.
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