In a day where there’s little room for new projects to develop in the highly competitive micro-blogging industry; a new star has been born. That star, along with its unusual name - is Plurk.

After being introduced in May of 2008 - Plurk has quickly risen to become one of the most interesting & captivating micro-blogging platforms offered on the internet.

To be honest - in the beginning I was skeptical of yet another, social media website. On a daily basis I was already hammered with Digg, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.. Why in the world would I setup another account, on yet another website?

After only a few short weeks - I quickly became committed to Plurk. In essence - I married Plurk; and here are a few short reasons why I’m glad I took her on that first date.

Intelligent User Interface

One of the most amazing ingredients you’ll immediately notice when visiting Plurk is its use of a horizontal time line, which gives posts the appearance of a fourth dimension; time.

Using your mouse you can drag your time line of Plurks backwords or forwards - enabling the viewing of each Plurk as they were posted throughout the day.

Simplicity Of Discussions

Some find that following blog posts on social media sites can become a time consuming - mind numbing experience. Replies become jumbled, discussions tweaked, and past comments forgotten. Plurk fixes this problem by grouping each Plurk - along with its corresponding replies. In essence - Plurk creates its own “forum” thread out of every Plurk.

A Perfect Balance of Power

In my opinion, Plurk has produced the perfect balance of power for site users. Profile avatars may be added, mini-bios posted, and minuscule design changes tweaked - but complete control isn’t handed over entirely.

This creates a smooth, easy to use experience - by witholding a certain degree of layout functions from members.

Often times, when browsing social media sites - member generated coding, layouts, etc…can take away from your browsing experience - and cause an eye killing, brain melting edpisode of trauma.

Glitzy banners are exempt, background images aren’t changeable, and faulty coding not forced on your computer - allowing for a civilized transfer of information from one member to the next.

Give Me A Pat On The Back

It’s human nature to feel the need to excel at a certain activity - and find social status or ranking. That’s why Plurks ingenious use of “Karma” comes into play.

Karma, displayed on every Plurker’s profile page - is the score automatically generated each day factoring in Plurk use. Generally - the more you Plurk, the further your Karma will increase. If you leave Plurk unattended for a few days - your Karma will drop.

Karma scores are set on a scale from 1 to 100 - one hundred being the best. As of now - my Karma is at 42.58, but continually grows as I tend to become more attached to the wonderful world of Plurking.

I Plurk now everyday - in fear Karma might rear its ugly head.

Tricks, Features & Tips

Plurk is full of cool features - and here are a few of my favorites. One of which, Karma, which I already described - is just one of the many great attributes of Plurk.

An interesting facet to Plurk’s handbag of tricks - is the ability to automatically embed images, videos, and links - without any extra code knowledge. If you post a link to YouTube - the video will be embedded into your post. If you post a photo to a Flickr image - it will embed itself. Post a link? No problem - it will convert itself. This feature alone adds great value to Plurk’s micro-blogging abilities.

Yes - a few formatting quirks must be learned to generate hyperlink text - but they’re minimal at best.

And They Lived Happily Ever After

Though this article will never do Plurk justice - I hope I’ve turned you into a potential Plurk fanatic.

It’s an excellent, powerful micro-blogging platform - which brings new features to the table on a weekly basis.

Use it to meet new friends, grow your brand, or chat with family. Its uses are endless…

Please use the following link to find Plurk - and learn the many wonders of Plurkville. By using this link - you’l be automatically added as my newest, best friend.

http://plurk.com/redeemByURL?from_uid=534856&check=1242947263&s=1

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering - I feel my marriage to Plurk will last as long as we both shall live; and I’ll definately be staying faithful ’til the end.