vs. 
With Twitter going down every so often, (reminding me of Eskom’s load-shedding), lots of people, including me, have been searching for an alternative. Well, we found it with Plurk. So after a few days of using it here’s my comparison of the two micro-blogging platforms.
Twitter, has amazing functionality and given that it’s API is freely available it’s very malleable and we can use it to do a million and one things. The only thing wrong with it is its periodic shut-downs and general irritability with some of its functions (like device updates via IM) working only on random occasions.
Plurk on the other hand looks very cool and puts all your “updates” on a time line so you can track who said what when (if you check the everyone list, this timeline is split by the second.) They have some other function a like a widget and gaining points called “karma”, which I’m not really sure how that works yet. I do like the reply function which is really easy and targeted towards various posts on plurk. The ease with putting up videos and photo’s is also a plus. You’ll find the little icons which you can represent yourself with are also a bit weird, cthulu-like thingies, with tentacles and spots and bones sticking out. Weird. Plurk’s downfall is it doesn’t share it’s API… so you get what they give you and that’s it. Their widget is only editable vertically which irritates me as it doesn’t fit on my blog sidebar and overall I just can’t seem to like it.
Twitter, however, could learn from Plurk’s visual standards, quirky nature and easier video and photo micro-blogging. It would also help if Twitter didn’t drop the ball so often.
Overall opinion… Plurk is very limiting compared to Twitter. If twitter sorts itself out, that’s where you’ll find me.
UPDATE: >Plurk is releasing their API! – Let the Micro-Blogging Wars begin! This will sway my opinion of which micro-blogging platform to use :)
Technorati Tags: Twitter, Plurk, Social Media, Micro-blogging, comparison
I have to agree Twitter it is, though I’m missing IM terribly sigh
call me back to twitter when they fix it ;)
Completely agree with you. Twitter has robust functionality, and is going through the teething phase. Although the outages are an irritation, hopefully each one is a learning curve for Twitter. Twitter essentially started as a teen tool, until it grew up and attracted a mainstream (although early adopter) audience. Plurk still needs to go through it’s paces and is clearly still being positioned as a teen tool: “Plurk: Plurk is a social journal that let’s you publish, share your thoughts, emo-ness, “!%#%”#” and loves. What is up, my friend?”
What I want to see is how they handle the crunch. My feeling is the pretty interface won’t do it. I reckon Twitter will attract more investment which will hopefully go into R&D, functionally and better volume capacity.
last weekend my mobile updates were not working… it was the first time in a longggg while that i had such a peaceful weekend! it was like a weekend break on the beach, very refreshing…..
the problem for me is all of my friends are on twitter… to get them to move over to plurk or anywhere else and star from scratch would just be way too much of a headache… im going to stick it out on twitter and hopefully things get better soon….
give pownce a try as well… its pretty cool, especially for file sharing. http://pownce.com/ some1 in the office said its a conspiracy- kevin rose is causing all the problems on twitter so that everyone will hopefully move to pownce :-) he is apparently giving away a xbox360 and iPhone 2 to any random person who follows him on twitter….
I know this is a year late, but I only recently joined twitter and been on plurk for almost a year. I was actually meaning to blog about this also, and maybe I will.
I think Plurk is better than Twitter, but Twitter has the bandwagon. Plurk is more close knit community, and the response thing and ability to find your own plurks is much easier. It’s like a jhb durban comparison.
Durban – you got family and friends, you have convenience.
Jhb – there’s lots of hustle and bustle but it’s where the money’s at
That’s a very interesting comparison. I’ve actually not been on Plurk in a long time. I feel it’s redundant and Twitter is more versatile. No doubt, plurk looks cooler but I’m a practical kind of guy and on a micro-blogging platform I feel its the content that counts… and a lot of the good content is on Twitter.
Then again, to each his own :)
Enjoy.