Should You Plurk?
What is Plurk?
Plurk describes itself as a place you can publish and share your thoughts, emo-ness, #^@%!%(& and loves. Plurk, like Twitter, is a microblogging site that lets you record your thoughts in 140 character chunks. Also like Twitter you can post your plurks directly on the site, via IM programs like MSN and AIM or from your mobile phone (not yet available).
Features of Plurk
One of the nicest features of Plurk is the ability to divide your followers into cliques and send message to a chosen clique rather than everyone on your followers list. Say your D&D gaming group is on Plurk, you can send a message to them only rather than letting everyone on your followers list how cool your half-orc thief is.
Another unique feature is the left to right scrolling time bar, rather than the typical top to bottom list as seen on most social networks. I am not entirely I like it, but it may be the case of the familiar versus the unfamiliar.
Also you can respond directly to someone’s Plurk and the responses to their Plurk are listed directly under the initial Plurk. A very nice feature indeed.
Annoyances
One of the annoying things about Plurk is that you must enter a last name. Unlike other applications that let you enter a ‘.’, Plurk demands you enter letters. For someone like me who does not use their real name on social networking sites, this means that your online identity has to now have a last name.
Another annoying thing is qualifies. Qualifies are words like is, was, thinks, feels and can be selected from the drop down list. You can choose freestyle and not use a qualifier, but having to choose from the drop down list rather than type in exactly what you want is irritating.
Also, you need to hover over someone’s plurk to see their whole message if it is more than about 30 characters rather then seeing the message in full. Meaning you can not just quickly scroll and read everything there is to read.
Whilst trying to add friends this evening to Plurk, I got the following error message, ” The server has either erred or is incapable of performing the required operation”. Umm… okay. Whilst I can understand a new service can have some hiccups, it is not filling me with confidence that one of the essential features of a social networking site is already having problems. The friends feature did come back briefly and then disappeared again. Basically it resembled a yo-yo for the entire time I was on the site.
One of my Twitter friends sent me an invite to Plurk, but when I clicked on her invite and then signed in to Plurk, it did not take me to her page, instead it took me to my own page. I still have no idea how to get to her page and add her to my friends list. I have tried adding the URL of her page to the Plurk page that I am signed in on but it signs me out if I do that. Now I consider myself a rather experienced user of the internet having been playing on here for the past 15 years and if I can’t work out how to add a friend from an invite, I have no idea how a novice user is going to figure it out. The only way I was able to add friends was to find someone I know on the main timeline and then click on their name and add them from there. I have still not been able to add my friend from Twitter on Plurk though. Sorry Erica.
Also while it says I can search for people on Plurk I am still yet to find the search bar on here.
So, should I Plurk?
No. Whilst there is some nice features of Plurk, the annoyances far outweigh the benefits. Whilst testing Plurk this evening, I have wanted to toss my laptop across the room on several occasions. Social networking sites should be easy and fun to use and Plurk fails on both at both of these things. Maybe Plurk will get their act together and make their application more user friendly, but until then, unless you are up for a challenge, stick to Twitter. Twitter might fall over occasionally as it goes through growing pains, but at least when it is up you don’t want to kill anyone.
If you do feel like a challenge and want to find me on Plurk, I am here, trying desperately to work out what the hell I am doing.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 am
[...] Australia visiting some of them. Secondly, reading about newish technologies like Twitter and Plurk. I read about those and thought to myself, “That’s just a very, very cut-down talker, [...]
July 5th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I have many of the same issues that you have with Plurk. I found it next to impossible to find friends and add them. Then there is the question of finding time to do all that microblogging,blogging, reading, and all those fun real life stuff like washing the dishes. It is a challenge and I really think that the ball is in the court of Plurk et al to make their platforms as user friendly as possible and more.
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October 30th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I love your thoughts! I normally don\’t even bother to leave comments, but I wanted to let you know that you hit the nail on the head!