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.
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