Category: Technology Author : Duncan Riley Posted: July 12, 2008
Tags : plurk
Subscribe: Tech Feed, Email, Twitter

Plurk Update: the quiet achiever

Plurk is continuing to grow, even at a time many first adopters have written it off. Regular Plurk users are noticing that the mix on Plurk is very much different to what you see on services such as Twitter. Darren Rowse noted during the week that “one of the things that I love about plurk is that the top user is using it to talk about knitting - no web 2.0 cool crowd but real people.” While I don’t believe that first adopters aren’t real people, the quote does sum up the mix on Plurk really well: the Plurk crowd is far more mainstream then the mix you see on other services.

Here’s some of the latest Plurk related tools and news since our last big Plurk update late June.

Plurkair still going strong

I typed Plurkair into Google the other day and it returned over 9,000 results, which is completely insane. Despite the unofficial Plurk API launching, I haven’t seen an API based replacement yet. If you’re finding the Plurk time line a barrier to entry, and would prefer a Twitter style interface, head on over to the Plurkair post here, and download it. A new version is being worked on.

SocialThing Supports Plurk

FriendFeed style service SocialThing has added support for Plurk, while FriendFeed itself is dragging the chain. SocialThing is embracing a lot of two way interaction at the moment so it’s worth a look, and I need to revisit it shortly myself.

Plurk Updater for WordPress

You can now update your Plurk account with your latest posts from WordPress with this WordPress plugin. My suggestion, as with the Twitter plugin, is that if you are writing a lot of posts, that you think twice about spamming people with links as it’s an quick path to losing followers.

State of the Web

State of the Web created the image above, that sums up how many Plurk users are feeling about the Twitter/ Plurk split at the moment. More here.

Plurk Widgets

Get your own Plurk Karma widgets or follower widgets here and here. The one thing that annoys me with Plurk is Karma, mostly because I don’t have a lot. I gave out the direct link to my profile when I first started writing about Plurk, and despite having introduced a pile of people to the service, I’m showing none introduced and therefore have a lower karma score than if I’d handed out the special link.

Plurk Greasemonkey Scripts

The full list here, but some highlights: Plurk Translator, Plurk Time Machine, Plurk Rich Edit and more.

Positive Press

Two posts of note: InsideCRM says “Plurk: A Welcoming Microblogging Community” and Smart Boy: “Why Plurk Rules The Micro-Blogging Universe.” Sucomments also has a solid three part series on using Plurk that starts here.

Plurk by the numbers

Things are looking good, particularly with Compete

You can also sign up, or follow me on Plurk by clicking here.

Plurk

Starfeeder

I love Plurk :)

It to me has more of a sense of community, while on Twitter its kinda like everyone yelling at each other.... I dunno just my 2cents

Ozegold

Thanks for the post!

I've found the mix of people, and their interests, on Plurk to be quite fascinating.

While the timeline might be off putting for some, it is conducive to conversation, and is probably one of the main reasons for its fast growing popularity.

Cheers

Chetan

Good to see a plurk related wordpress widget :)
Plurk is really addicting, and the communication becomes almost similar to the conferences that we see in IM services..

I am just loving Plurk and its features.

zuzu

My interaction on Plurk is pretty much with people I know in real life, or with others that my friends know. It is far more intimate than Twitter - in fact no comparison. My responses in Twitter are much more calculated and less off the cuff.

I do have a hard time with the behaviour in Plurk - for example if I am replying to a Plurk and accidentally click outside the reply box, my response vanishes. These sort of behaviours need to be addressed, as well as the silly Karma thing which I completely ignore.

I am completley private in Plurk as the intimacy of my comments is something I don't want available to all.

gsmaverick

Located in Canada?? Wow, I thought we didn't have tech companies up here!

Ed

You're kidding right?

Avatar

Plurk originally benefited not only from twitter woes but also from pownce woes. some of the most engaged users in plurk used to be most of the time in pownce. i include myself into that camp.

pownce has a entire month of unstable behavior and a on and off API that caused some of pownce users to jump shift.

and while plurk may never catch up to twitter it is now third just after friendfeed and already bigger than jaiku and pownce. quite impressive for a service that don`t has a API or official desktop app but that was smart enough to have a good mobile version and a good widget.

of and have you checked that it got 10 sites dedicated to plurk related things?

Teeg

Great article, Duncan! Thanks so much for the mention! SU Comments Guide has actually grown to 4 main parts now (the last section is on mobile plurking), and a printable sheet of graphics since you can add the codes but can't see the graphics on mobile.

Plurk has quickly become my favorite social connecting site, the interaction there is simply amazing. What is surprising is that less than 10% of Plurk users are teens. Perhaps even more surprising, there are quite a few users age 50 and up.

There are indeed a large group of knitters, but there are also a good number of early adopters hanging around. To me, it is the ideal mix for a site, techies and non-techies all hanging out and making friends. In fact, it reminds me a bit of when I first started at SU, where there was also an eclectic mix of people learning from and enjoying each others interests.

deknits

@Teeg: Just wanted to point out that lots of knitters *are* techies and early adopters.

Smart Boy

Plurk has been great to me thus far. The wonderful people, fluid design/interface, lack of ads - it all makes for a great social media experience.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Plurk Update: the quiet achiever

You might also like