Plurk vs. Twitter Debate Misses the Main Point
June 12, 2008
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Plurk is the hot social media property of the last couple weeks. People are joining quickly, writing reviews and debating the relative merits of Twitter (follow me on Twitter here) versus Plurk (follow me on Plurk here). Here’s the general summary so far, to save you some time:
Twitter crashes too much. We like it, and all our friends are there, but we just might leave in droves if they don’t fix it soon.
Plurk is interesting, and man some features are much better than Twitter (like responding directly to Plurks and sharing videos and photos more easily. But it’s add a friend feature really sucks compared to Twitter and I don’t want to build my base again.
And both sentiments are exactly true. That’s the nutshell on the Plurk versus Twitter debate. Twitter is taking steps to fix things; Plurk is no doubt racing to get some sort of Twitter friend import feature. (Generally, I’d rather be Twitter in this race, other than the fact that they have been soooo slow to fix their problems…)I think only Dosh Dosh got it right in terms of the big picture. Like a lot of the social media platforms we use today, either Twitter or Plurk is going to either go away or fade into oblivion. It doesn’t matter who wins the race as much as it matters that people are connecting again. Would I bet my mortgage that Twitter is going to be here in 5 years? Nope. Would I bet my mortgage that services like it (call it microblogging, call it a “presence app”, call it group messaging) will still be around? Yeah. I will.Because this sort of touching base makes us feel better. It makes us feel connected. It makes us feel closer to our “friends”. It facilitates relationships. That’s the main point in all this, I think.What do you think?
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4 Responses to “Plurk vs. Twitter Debate Misses the Main Point”
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Plurk looks like Twitter baby:)
For me, microblogging is so new. Twitter frustrates me with their outages though. Plurk, I’m still getting used to. On both of them, the amount of tweets & plurks can be overwhelming if you have lots of followers (twitter). However, it’s a good way to get to know the people behind the websites & blogs.
I agree with your point that it’s not which provider (Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, etc.) it’s microblogging/presence apps themselves that are here to stay. Twitter has the market lead if they don’t blow it. I use both Twitter and Plurk regularly, like them both for different reasons, but most of the people I want to stay in touch with are still on Twitter. It’s the people that matter to me, not the technology.
The thing that puts me off Plurk is the fact all my friends/followers are on Twitter.