Plurk-mania
Do you Plurk? I was a late adopter, but now not a day goes by without finding me plurking at least once a day. It used to privately amuse me seeing some friends fretting about their “karma” points. Now I find myself wishing I had more myself! All for extra smilies… 
Seriously, Plurk, founded only a little more than a year ago, is now a Web mainstay. Its competitors — among them, Twitter and FriendFeed — lag behind the kind of user experience that it offers. Twitter might be bigger, but personally, I prefer Plurk because it is more social in nature; Twitter feels rather static.
Not only a platform for micro-blogging (only 140 characters per post), Plurk also encourages conversation because your friends can reply to your post. Aside from that, you can also insert links to external sites; post photos and embed videos. What’s more, posts generate their own URIs, which can then be referenced. For example, take a look at this conversation where some Plurkers talked about the impending anti-smoker ordinance in Davao.
I’ve seen Plurk being used for getting people together — Plurkfiesta, anyone? — and for a myriad advocacies. There are some enthusiastic users who also do surveys, trivia exchanges and contests. Filipino Plurkers have even named the virtual community they find themselves in; my favorite is “Plurkistan”.
Also, my blogs get a lot of traffic from Plurk. The first couple of weeks after I became active, and aggressively used the horizontally-scrolling timeline to announce updates to my various blogs, I noticed that my top site referrers would always include plurk.com. So, aside from being able to keep tabs on friends who aren’t in Davao, this Web wonder has proven itself to be a truly useful and sociable online platform.
For Plurk’s company profile, view the CrunchBase entry.
On the iPhone / iPod touch, there are now two Plurk apps that can be used. One is free and the other one costs $1.99. Unfortunately, both apps are still not up to the task of providing the Plurker a satisfying experience. Both apps are slow, and lack certain features. My friend and fellow Plurker, Jaime, says the problem might be because Plurk has not yet released an API.
Once Plurk exposes their API to the world of Web developers, I’m sure we’ll see improvements implemented on the iPhone apps, and might even see more of such software. Until then, I’m going to stick to the mobile Web version published by the Plurk team: www.plurk.com/m. On the iPhone or on Symbian-powered phones, Plurk rocks! :rocknroll:
Here are screenshots of the two iPhone Plurk applications. The first two images show the paid app, iPlurk; the following 5 show screens of the better — and free! — app by Ryan Lim. The second-to-the-last one is a screenshot of Plurk Mobile, and the last one is what you see when you go to the Plurk homepage.
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- The iPlurk app for iPhone / iPod touch
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- A conversation on iPlurk
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- Between the two Plurk apps, this one is so much better!
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- My Plurk public timeline on the iPod touch
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- A Plurk conversation on the iPod touch
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- View of my Plurk contacts page on the iPod touch
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- The Plurk smilies cheat page on the iPod touch
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- Plurk mobile site
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- The Plurk homepage
Themes for Plurkers | Twittered out | Saved by Twitter | OLX free classifieds | Davao Blogs Directory
i’m a plurkian o plurk adik …whichever…hahaha
:rocknroll:
i enjoy plurking…
now i have been made a blog a bout plurk themes in yodroo.com
enjoy “plurking”
Thanks for that link, karmin. And thanks for visiting my blog.
Here’s another site for plurk themes.
I really don’t get the point of plurk. It’s like the “friendster” of micro-blogging.
Sorry to be harsh, pero I’m sticking to twitter and/or regular blogging.
No offense to plurk users.
That’s ok, Ron. We’re all entitled to our own opinion. :nerd:
Just started getting hooked with Plurk. It’s just so amazing to share your thoughts even feelings to Plurkers in few seconds and get tons of responses too. It is really one of my admired platform for a fast, real and responsive way of communicating.
If you’re a late adopter, then I’m the last one in the building. You see, I sunk my teeth into Plurk just this week, and I’m wondering why I never plurked (or twitted) earlier on.
Anyway, I just wanted to write how I’m liking PhPlurk’s service. I’ve successfully posted about 2 plurks using my mobile already. I saw the link through your own Plurk recently.