Twitter – you either love it or hate it. The application has exploded onto the web, where not only everybody seems to need one, but even larger corporations have set up Twitter accounts. Tweeting is the next big thing! tons of people are getting into this new trend, while naysayers stand behind and wave their fingers in disgust.
Though Twitter may have it’s downfalls (and there’s plenty to pick at), there is hope beyond the horizon! For those of you who haven’t heard of Plurk, you should start by checking out all of features this new application has to offer! Similar to Twitter, Plurk allows you to create your own profile page, customize your avatar and page design, and also to friend people and follow their “plurks”!
But there’s even more, and Plurk’s new ideas may just blow Twitter back into the stone ages where it can stew.
Not to say that Twitter isn’t immesly popular and useful as it stands, and I wouldn’t just stop tweeting for the life of me! But it’s hard to ignore applications that have such an amazing start like Plurk has! Already at a PageRank 7 and 1,000 Alexa rank, Plurk is rising through the tides and showing it’s strength. But what does it have to offer?
Plurk’s Greatest Experience: Live Timeline of Updates!
While Twitter is set up to show new Tweets on your home page, it displays them in a newfeed style where you have to scroll through them all. This isn’t a bad style of doing things, but can be tedious and possibly annoying to the impatient. Plurk has a whole new method – a horizontal timeline, showcasing all of your previous Plurks in-line with all of your friends plurks!
This is the main feature I just can’t stop raving about, as it showcases such a brilliant user experience and connectivity with friends. You can share links, photos, videos, or just a plain status update of stating what you want, feel, need, etc. Below is an example of my Plurk profile for my website Blogger Den. I just opened the account a month ago, just to get a feel for the web app. And I’ve already fallen head over heels for it!
Plurk’s Status Updates – The Freedom!
Another great thing about Plurk? The freedom for your status updates! Instead of a basic 140-character limit to some description for an update, Plurk allows you to customize things even deeper. Changing things to “I hate”, “I wish”, “I hope”… there’s tons of them! It makes sharing your feelings with your friends easier, more fun, and a bit more controlled (check below for a small screencap from Blogger Den).
It’s not only this, but you can share links with your friends easily with Plurk’s status updates. This makes things so much more dynamic – whereas Twitter limits you to URL’s and character counts, you frequently need to use short URL’s to make your links fit into your stats updates.
Now this isn’t a complaint at all, just an observation of how much easier it is to plurk a link to your friends than it is to tweet it. And this is only the tip of the iceberg! I can’t wait to see what new ideas and updates the creators of Plurk can come up with – the sky’s the limit, really!
I wouldn’t start running through the streets shouting blasphemy about Twitter by now. Clearly Twitter has a very large following, it’s ranking one of the most popular web apps up there with MySpace and Facebook. But I certainly wouldn’t doubt what power Plurk may have in the near future.
If you’re interested in these cool web 2.0 networking micro-blogging gadgets and apps (which I hope if you read this blog you are!), then definitely check out http://www.plurk.com/ and just see what it has to offer. You may be pleasantly surprised by it’s user-friendliness, and may end up dumping Twitter to date a newer, more attractive microblogging platform.
