Veteran Plurker @dotlizard has very astutely suggested an addition to my proposed list of sobriquets which could rightfully be applied to Plurk. I have added her suggestion to the original column and will use her words to tell why Plurk also belongs to the category Micro-Blogging. One forgets (at least I did) how quickly Web genres appear and become at least semi-official, and thus did I leave this important category out of the list.

In a comment in the original column, dotlizard started by saying, “I would propose a fourth category, micro-blogging. I believe that micro-blogging does incorporate all of the above listed functions [in the original column] but in a very lightweight fashion, which i consider typical of the micro-blogging platform (Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Brightkite).”

Dotlizard goes on to say, “To me, micro-blogging is like the playground of the social media / networking / bookmarking crowd, a place where they can interact without necessarily being compelled to always produce or link to *great* content. it is also an acceptable venue to promote their non-micro blogs (whereas that is frowned upon in social media and bookmarking). The “micro” format encourages discussion but puts up barriers to discussions of any depth (so it’s perfect for the modern, internet-addled attention span). also, it’s a more relaxed environment, where it’s ok to be outright goofy, as opposed to the other types of sites where contributions are submitted for judgment by others.”

These comments are obviously right on the money. Even more so is dotlizard’s commentary on Plurks contribution to the Micro-Blogging medium. She says, “I actually believe that Plurk has taken the micro-blog platform to the next level. while Pownce, Jaiku, and BK all have great advantages over the original Twitter in their multimedia sharing capabilities, none were able to beat the immediacy of Twitter (as experienced through Twitter clients such as Twhirl, anyway). What Plurk has done is included the immediacy in a shiny, on-the-fly-updating AJAX web interface, and added the elusive Karma to hook the competitive types.”

I believe that dotlizard has more to share with us on this subject, and I hope she chooses to let us showcase her views here. It is most apparent that she is a keen observer of the virtual social scene.

I am KDFrawg on Plurk, and I hope you will stop by there and let me know what you think!