Why I gave Plurk the flick
A while back on my blog I wrote about how I was using Twitter and Plurk and how I updated both of them using Ping.fm. I’ve given up on Plurk however and walked away without a backward glance. The very reasons that drew me to Plurk initially drove me away in the end.
Plurk allows friends to reply to your posts so you can see something similar to a threaded discussion and that’s a great facility. The thing that made me give it up was that these discussions weren’t that interesting. I’m sorry but I’m not that interested in knowing that people have gotten out of bed, and that they are going shopping now, and all the minute details of their lives.
While I found some friends quite quickly on Plurk I also wasn’t part of the in crowd amongst my friends because I didn’t participate in the chatter. At least I think that’s why. I didn’t reply to all posts because it’s a huge time waster. I found myself at work checking Plurk instead of working and it takes a lot longer to check all replies to various plurks than it does to scan through Twitter.
Having said that I’ve witnessed a really cohesive and supportive community emanating from my local Plurkers who have meetups all the time and that’s a good thing. I just couldn’t do it and maintain my real life as well.
I decided in the end that I could only maintain one platform, not two and at this stage Twitter’s the one for me.
How about you?
I didn’t give it the flick so much as simply stopped using it. I too found it time consuming and frustrating. With twitter I feel like I can come and go as time allows but I found with Plurk that you really needed to be using it fairly regularly in order to keep up with friends, keep up with karma and so on.
I didn’t start with Plurk as I just didn’t think I had the time for another social medium. Sounds like I might have saved myself some time for once.
I find Plurk useful for more intimate conversations and when you really need help from folks that are reliable. The challenge I had with Twitter is when most of my connections have too much folks to follow themselves. There was less one-on-one conversation than it was before. It became more of a plugging type of service.
Janette, I think you’re right about Plurk being useful for more intimate conversations but to even do that I think you have to maintain your Plurk presence which is very time consuming. I also don’t know how people can follow a huge amount of people on Twitter. Conversations definitely get lost. If there was something in the middle, that would be great.
I never jumped in to Plurk, it just seemed like a twitter wanna-be to me, and I guess in a way it was / is… Twitter is however getting a little spammy and noisy of late, I still find the conversation keeps me around….though maybe not listening as intently as I did before.
In my point of view twitter is more user freindly than Plurk,and it allows more conversation and less time consuming ,good job keep it up
nice one…..
What you say about not having time is spot on. Eventually we all have to make some choices as there is so much on offer out there. Mind you “plurk” is hardly a catchy name, now is it?