The Personality of Plurk
We have all talked about the differences between Plurk and other social sites, because it is fun to do so. We have talked about design issues, the GUI, the threads, the conversational mores, and the people that we know and love on Plurk. All of that is great, and true, and fascinating. But, to me, there is another critical element that is begging for just a little serious ( and non-serious) discussion.
To wit, I cannot imagine Biz Stone at Twitter entering into an actual conversation with users. I can easily imagine him making announcements about Biz Stone, and ignoring the burning of Twitter while talking about his girlfriend’s skunktivities. Biz proves the first half of my strong belief about the two social services:
Twitter is for announcements. Plurk is for conversations.
–Michael W Jones, 2008
Amix and Alvin have proved the other half. I was amazed (and gratified) when amix stopped by this blog to make a comment. That was not necessary, and it was very un-Biz Stone-like. Amix imparted useful information in the flow of a conversation, and it showed me that the people of Plurk understand that Plurk is for conversation, too.
Then, when Alvin showed up live in the Middle of a PlurkCast, all of my positive thoughts were confirmed, and in spades. Plurk cares enough about the Plurk community to actually participate in it. There is not a clearer sign in the world that we are in the right place. We care about Plurk, we care about each other, and the people of Plurk do, too. This place rocks.
I’m KDFrawg on Plurk and I love both the charm and reality of Plurk!
July 18th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Plurk reminds me a lot of Mixx in this regard. Passionate users + passionate and involved admin team = success and happiness. Which is why I like both services so much, I guess.
Great article. Fed my Plurk-fix while waiting for the site to be back up from maintenance.
July 18th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
@honest_ape -
FedEx would be the slow way, but it would be better than no way.
If it stays down for long, maybe I can put up a chat room… LOL!
July 18th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I have never been able to find the link to actually listen to the archived plurkcast from plurkable site. Can you direct me to it?
July 18th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
@yoonamaniac -
I’m sorry! Here’s that link. The older shows are down near the bottom of the page:
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=21651&cmd=tc
July 18th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
HiYa, kdfrawg! I joined Twitter to look for Plurk friends to see how their non-Plurk day is going. I left within 5 minutes. Not the same. Plurk is worth waiting for!
Hope we’ll all be gathering back tonight!
July 18th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Great article and it brings to mind a question. Why is plurk different in the outward shows of gratitude and community than other sites? Is it the people you friend? Is it the freedom? It’s a love fest and feels like a “commune”ity. Plurkstock.
July 18th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Great Post.
July 18th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Great post. It’s pretty funny that when you had announced when the Plurk cast was going to be, I had wanted to join in but because it was a tele-conference, I opted not to because I prefer webcasts a lot more because the tele-conferencing programs boggle my mind. And of course the one day where I was sitting here and could have participated, one of Plurk’s actual team shows up. When I heard about that, I was delighted. I left Twitter after I went to sign in after not doing so for about a week because of my addiction to Plurk and as soon as it gave me 4 errors in a row while trying to do stuff on there, I just gave up. I opened Twhirl, since Twitter wasn’t letting me post and put that I was leaving, was fed up with the program and it’s glitchy interface and how nothing worked and I’m glad I did because it’s so obvious that Plurk cares about its users just as much as its users care about Plurk, as you said, and it isn’t rocket science to see that Twitter couldn’t give a damn at all.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Very interesting observations. I came to Plurk without ever being on Twitter and it’s nice to understand the different potential functions. Thanks dude.
SquireHogg
July 18th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I was reading your post and thinking how funny it will be when Biz Stone gets the Google Alert with his name on it pointing to your site.
With an ego like Biz demonstrates in Twitter, he has to see your post. I am glad you once again documented your statement that “Twitter is for announcements. Plurk is for conversations.”
This is a great community.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
I think Plurk just does their job with a lot of humor and grace- poking fun at themselves, society and us. They make us laugh and they help us make others laugh.
That “we are the world” page was just brilliant!
July 19th, 2008 at 4:13 am
Yes, I think more and more people take same conclusion that Plurk is for conversations, and Twitter for announcements, maybe because there are many companies, that are interested more to sell their products, than to interact with users…
July 19th, 2008 at 6:49 am
I agree whole heartedly that we are in the right place. I’ve had comments from Amix on some of my plurks and have received responses to responses from him.
The A-team is like no other team like this that I have ever seen. You never hear from Zuckerberg on Facebook or the folks at Twitter.
Their sense of humor is excellent and they even take our criticisms in stride. I’m sure they got a lot of flack for the downtime yesterday but they have done their best (at least I think so) to help the users and give us what we want.
The fact that Alvin showed up on the middle of PlurkCAST shows that they really do care and even enjoy interacting with the community they’ve created. I hope this keeps up even when the get ridiculously huge
Cheers for now!
July 19th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
[...] This is not to say that Plurk isn’t having some growing pains. There have been moments when Plurk is unavailable, but the key difference is when Plurk returns there is something new, or a bug has been fixed. The fact that Plurk is constantly refining itself is really where it leaves Twitter in the dust. There are a number of other reasons why. Instead of regurgitating the same thing others have mentioned, check out the following: Techipedia, InsideCRM, and Plurkiverse. [...]
July 20th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
With all the problems plurk is having today, I decided to check out twitter. I like plurk better, but maybe because I have no friends yet on twitter. Ah the complex world of the international web net.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:20 am
We are just “people” that try to create the best site around - we love our community and our users so of course we stop by and say hi between the coding and designing sessions
(g_rock_n_roll)
July 21st, 2008 at 10:22 am
Props to the A-Team. Props to KDFrawg!
July 21st, 2008 at 10:50 am
Funny I should read this today. I had a conversation with a Twitterer last night, one of their replies to me was “Twitter just isn’t the same as Plurk for you is it?” And of course it isn’t, there is nothing exceptionally social about Twitter, and I have often wondered what the fascination with it was. I started Twittering before I started Plurking and it quickly became evident that Plurk was much more social. It now seems to me, after reading a lot about the social networking landscape, that platforms like Twitter are for shooting things off into the wild and not caring where they end up. I actually find it amusing to look at the A-list Twitters who are on Plurk because you can see that they treat it like Twitter, a comment, thought or link and they move on, never replying. Why they don’t get that with Plurk you can start a discussion and get a lot of useful intelligent insight is beyond me. I really think they are missing out in a large way.