Today, after holding out for some time with my usual reluctance and cynicism towards  all things new and gimmicky, I signed up for a Plurk account.

To be honest I had already dismissed it in my head beforehand as just a Twitter clone, short micro blog style announcements to the world with a social element. While it does share the same basic set up as Twitter, short 140 character messages viewable by your followers, It’s the interface i think that makes Plurk so different. Instead of a list view of either your own posts or those of people you follow, Plurk sets them all out  in a horizontally scrollable timeline.

Here’s where it gets fun though, if you click on any of the posts or plurks then an Instant Messaging style box opens with all the recent Plurk responses showing. This not only makes it incredibly easy to keep track of responses, It potentially turns each Plurk into an instant conversation, joining in the conversation is as easy as replying to an Instant Message and a simple comment can turn into an epic debate or a fun way of checking in with friends and catching up on the latest goings on. You can post links in the same way as with Twitter but the responses seem so much more instant with the Plurk layout and really encourage conversation.

I dont see Plurk as a replacement for Twitter though. While it has many advantages over Twitter such as ease of use, the brilliantly simple user  interface and the instantly more sociable feel, it does have a couple of drawbacks to Twitter. The fact that its so easy to hop into conversations and start new ones makes it a lot more instant than Twitter and even with just a handful of friends, it gets impossible to keep up with everything going on, not to mention a huge timehog if you were to try. Much more fun just to join in with random topics. While this is a lot of fun, it makes it very difficult to use Plurk in the same way that you would use Twitter for making announcements or sending out blog update links for instance, they just get buried in amongst all the other Plurks on the timeline.

I think I will end up using both Twitter and Plurk but in different ways, Twitter for blog updates because its far easier for subscribers to see those updates in Twitter, and Plurk as a fun way of keeping in touch with friends. Think of Plurk as a natural progression of Instant Messaging and less as a Twitter clone and like me, you will get the point of it.

Eventually!