Very Initial Notes on Plurk (Twitter Bias Acknowledged)

For general caveat, see above. @chris23

The latest web2.0 gizmo, Plurk appears to be following Twitter’s lead in the instant-message-microblog-sms-pipe domain of social apps/services. My first impression? Meh. But again, see the caveat above re: Twitter. (BTW, Twitter is lit up with talk of Plurk right now… I just saw 135 “plurk” tweets come through in 5mins).

Some nice affordances, but the awkward UI and obvious youth branding kinda bug. The deal-breaker for me is the apparent lack of any sort of public UI. Plurk’s runtime layer is opaque at the moment, though this may be the plan given the teen gimmicks.

- UI is strangely awkward. Branding is trying to be cute but alt-y. Too much UI.
- Branding is also focusing on self-celebrity with a no-age twist: “It’s instant gratification, instant self-indulgence, instant celebrity, instantly YOU.”
- I like the scrubbing timeline concept but it seems to flow from right to left, instead of the standard right=now(er).
- Display of posts is not as linear as Twitter (eg it’s more difficult to at-a-glance see when posts have happened).
- Karma is credit for number of posts. More posts (>karma) gets you access to special emoticons and other TBD shwag.
- I like being able to open up a conversation from a post.
- Have already seen multiple tweets re-branding the word “plurk” with “puke”.
- Crawls the usual IM/email suspects for friends to invite.
- Friends & Fans
- “Supports” image/video posts by thumbnailing posted urls.
- Can include a basic set of emoticons >emotiYawns<, clearly targeting teh yout’s.
- No sign of public API (this will be the first and only-necessary nail in the Plurk coffin unless they spin it as a controlled safe-haven for kiddies).