Plurk me
Plurk is a new micro-blogging service from Canada. Riding on the heels of Twitter’s current problems and an endorsement from Leo Laporte, it provides not only the standard 140-character micro-blogging service that everyone loves from Twitter, it adds several new features. Some are attractive, some are…not.
“plurk is hard it has instructions” – irina slutsky via Twitter
The name
The name still kind of bothers me. I’d like to say it’s growing on me, but it’s not. Twitter is such a cute name and it doesn’t sound like something a bunch of teenagers came up with while getting high on model glue. Plurk is one of those names that sounds like was just random and silly. However, it does lend itself to being used as a verb which does tend to happen a lot in the web 2.0 world, so kudos for that.
Timeline
The first thing you notice with Plurk is that the timeline moves horizontally from right-to-left, not the more accepted left-to-right. I believe they made the timeline the way they did because in order to read a timeline left-to-right, you have to start reading the messages with the text inside the timeline. As cute as the timeline is, I still like the simple vertically-scrolling timeline we all know and love. I don’t follow a lot of people, but I can’t imagine a horizontally scrolling timeline filled vertically with followers would be easy to manage after a while. How far back does this timeline go?
Encapsulated conversations
One of the great things about Plurk is that the conversation doesn’t spill out into the public timeline. With Twitter, responses to individuals are seen by all. This is both a shortcoming of the Twitter web interface and the third party apps that don’t even try to round up conversations. Plurk does what Pownce does and keeps all the responses to a message self-contained. I applaud this feature. This morning, @banannie (banannie on Plurk) noticed the “plurk page” option from the conversation’s menu. Click it, and the conversation shows up on its own page. So far as I know you can’t have more than one level of a conversation.
Built-in karma
@dossy created this amazing tool for Twitter called Twitter Karma. It shows you all the people you’re following, and who’s following you back so you can see if you’re following more people that are following you. Plurk has a built-in karma level which gives you a real-time status of how much of a selfish jerk you’re being 
.
Mobile Plurk
Plurk does have a rather nifty mobile interface. Just go to http://www.plurk.com/m and see a nice mobile-friendly timeline.
Real-time updates. Sorta.
Plurk’s main web site shows in your browser title and in the timeline that there are updates, but it doesn’t actually refresh the browser itself, you have to click on the link to see the updates. This is good and bad because on one hand, the browser can’t tell if you’re actually looking at the timeline when updates come in but at the same time, maybe I just want automatic refreshes. This could tax their system as they become more popular. I’d like to see this as an option.
No API, so no Pluhrl.
Currently, there’s no API for Plurk, so don’t expect a Twhirl-type app for Plurk anytime soon. There’s also no SMS, but there was a post on their blog this morning that said “Carrier Is Coming. That is all”. Is SMS coming? Let’s hope so.
Verbs
One thing that bugs me about Plurk is the use of a dropdown menu to select verbs for your messages. For example, instead of typing “I think my Chevy is cool”, you select a menu of verbs such as “thinks, says, feels, was, asks” to preface your note. I find this to be extremely annoying because I just want to type. The list isn’t large, but it’s still an extra action I have to do to create a message. There’s a “freeform” option which I now use which allows me to type without the use of a verb.
@ and d
You can send public notes to users using the @ symbol like Twitter does, but to send a private note, you have to use another menu to tell the system who will be able to see the note. I tried using the “d” method of sending a private message like Twitter does and it didn’t work, the message was public.
Cliques
One of the absolute worst terms you can use to group people together is the word “clique”. The name suggests people that don’t want to bother with people outside their group. They need to use a new name for this feature.
Friend/follower
With Plurk, you can choose to simply follow a user, or friend them, or both. I don’t understand why clicking “add as a friend” automatically sets the option to follow. It’s one extra step I shouldn’t have to do.
Other miscellaneous items
- You can edit messages!
- It’s not as simple as it should be
- Too many drop-down menus
- I like the use of RSS
- I like that you can embed pictures
- What’s with the headless mascot?
- Stars are given out to people that got the most plurk users via invites. How about Twitter users that used word of mouth?
- The use of “user” in the URL for a user (eg: http://www.plurk.com/user/starman)
- Using the scroll wheel to navigate the timeline is cool.
- No search
I think that Plurk has a lot of promise. If they can focus on simplicity, get an API, support SMS, and get rid of the name “clique”, I think that they can become a serious contender to Twitter and Pownce. I like how Plurk is trying to expand on Twitter, but they have to understand the power of simplicity. Ask me in a month if I still like the name.
You can find me on Plurk as starman.
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[...] – Jared Radosevich It's a dog without a head. i.e. a website without usability – directeur http://www.geekfridge.com/?p=1…; – Starman As long as Twitter remains unstable, Plurk is the most Twitter-like option out there [...]
And I thought I was a geek….up on all the new stuff. How do you keep beating me to all this shiny new stuff?