Plurk Imitation or Innovation

1st Make Money Online and Now Micro Blogging sites are popping up week by week. It looks like new generation Webmaster believes in Following the path then leaving the trail

The new player to join the Bandwagon of Micro Blogging is *Plurk* this themed IM (Instant Messaging) Founded by Alvin Woon and his other 6 mates the site officially launched on January 23 2008. This crazy named site was labeled as Twitter clone soon after its launch

Is Plurk is really a Twitter Clone?

Many say Plurk is Twitter clone, I say Plurk is innovative and it has some feature that no other Micro Blogging site has. The most obvious unique feature is the timeline. It may keep u away at first. As it did to some, but many will like this unique feature. If u don’t like it at 1st I would suggest u to stick around for some time. Explore its options follow others I am sure u will like it. Auto-updating of timeline and notification of new plurk or response on plurk is something u will find cool. Another feature that Plurk has but the others don’t is the ability to prefix your Plurk with moods or actions, such as “hates, loves, shares, will,” etc.

The User Interface and Experience

Unlike any other Micro Blogging site signing up and using Plurk realy simple and it takes 1/3 of Wordpress’s famous 5 minute installation. And once you start using it, some very interesting differences compare to other lifestreaming services start to become obvious. 1st and the most obvious differences u will notice is User Interface which is brilliant and cool. Plurk's use of the unconventional horizontally scrolling time-line is really smart.


Anyone who frequently grieves over Twitter's lack of threading and has found some comfort in FriendFeed, is going to love the comment threading method on Plurk. Thanks to then number at the end of every message you can check how many replies any plurk has gotten. You can see all these replies and add your own simply by clicking on that number. You can also scroll to the bottom of the floating message window and click the Plurk page link, which takes you to the full conversation page for that message and allows you to add your reply



Like other Micro Blogging sites Plurk allows you to customize your profile appearance by adding a custom title and theme, post links, photos, and videos, and an embeddable lifestream widget.


Network Management
The most resembling feature of Plurk is Friends invites, which u have experienced with Twitter and Pownce You can use email contact lists as well as instant messaging contact lists to import or invite friends. Once imported and after they have accepted your requests, you and your friends can determine different levels of access to your lifestream using the simple Plurk V/S advanced Plurk options. Simple Plurks can be shared with everyone, your friends, friends of friends and advanced Plurks allow you to section your friend list into different groups and Plurk by clique.



One of the core things that are missing on the social web is gratitude of the communities that help the products or services succeed. While Plurk doesn't do anything significant in that department, it does give its users various levels of stars depending on how many friends they have recruited. This potentially serves as both a way for Plurk to show their appreciation, and give you an incentive to recruit more people (so that you can be seen with a star around your avatar).



The service also uses an outdated concept of karma. The more active you and your friends are on the site, the more karma you accumulate. As you build karma, exclusive features become available to you.


My Conclusion

When I first read Darren Rowse’s Plurk post I clicked the just out curiosity ( I personally don’t like Social networking & Micro Blogging sites) as soon as I land on my timeline page after signup I asked my self “ Where the hell have u came? “ what are all this floating faces with some stupid messages. But after using it for some time and checking all the features and functions I was thoroughly impressed with the concept of Plurk . I think Plurk is an amazing advancement over the previous generation of Micro Blogging