A virtual weird world called Plurk

So here I am, decided to give the world of Plurk a try.

Plurk is “A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, and follow the events of the people that matter to you, in deliciously digestible short messages called plurks”

Plurk is like Twitter but better (or so they say).

The main reason I tried Plurk was because some bloggers say that it can generate traffic to your site. However, I was surprised because that motivation has been smeared by the fun of.. plurking!

An Introduction of Plurk

Back in my teenager days, I was on mIRC, a nice simple program where you can chat with anyone all over the world easily through a public and/or a private channel. Plurk is kinda like a hybrid of mIRC and discussion forum. It’s the second generation of mIRC, I may call it.

In Plurk, once you gain friends (Don’t worry, everyone on Plurk wants to be your friend), you will see all these shouts/threads of your friends on your Plurk’s timeline.

The timeline looks like this:

The timeline might be confusing at first, but you’ll get used to it. As you can see on the screenshot, when your friend makes a “post” (they call it “plurk”), it will be displayed on your timeline, depends on the time when the plurk was made.

You can plurk what you are doing at the moment, a question to ask your friends, sharing your new blog post to others, or even saying good night and good morning (you’ll see this very often on your timeline :)).

Plurk also has a Karma point. The more you use Plurk, the more your Karma point will increase. It serves like a rank on Plurk. The higher the better. Having a high karma point will also open a few locked settings on Plurk.

What a weird world of Plurk

I call Plurk a weird virtual world, because:

Everyone in there is your friend even though you don’t know who they are, what they look like (hey, the photo can be misleading!), and you can never know them all intimately.
You are itching to reply every plurks available on your timeline. I don’t know why!
For some strange reasons, plurks of “Good morning” and “Good night” receive the most responses than other Plurks.

What I like about Plurk

Having more friends, even though they aren’t real, but real enough :)
A quick answer to your question, if you already have a lot of friends and influence
Simply interacting with other people is fun at Plurk, thanks to the AJAX-y intuitive interface.
Looking your Karma point gets higher each day. It makes you feel to have some sort of achievement in *ahem* life.
A hug whenever you need one:
A great time waster lol

What I don’t like about Plurk

It will take some time before your “friends” actually befriend you. You’ll find that your plurks will get tiny replies until a certain stage. It’s fair I guess. You need to be active first and get to know your friends before they get to know you!
Once you have more than 20 friends, your timeline will get cluttered. I don’t want to imagine what it will look like once you have 100 friends or more!
Like above, it’s also hard to keep track of every plurk and its replies once you have lots of friends.
You can’t tag some plurks as favorites/to be watched. Good luck in scrolling to find whether your favorite plurks have new replies on them or not.
A great time waster, as said above lol

So is Plurk better than Twitter? You bet.

If you are on Plurk, don’t forget to add me as your friend! My profile is on http://www.plurk.com/user/michaelaulia. If you want to join Plurk, use this link so I’ll know when you sign up and I’ll add you as my friend. See you there and happy plurking ;)

After you join Plurk, these sites may come in handy: