What do you think of when you think of the term ‘currency’ ? Dictionary.com offers these definitions of currency:

cur·ren·cy [kur-uhn-see, kuhr-] –noun, plural -cies.

1.	something that is used as a medium of exchange; money.

2.	general acceptance; prevalence; vogue.

3.	a time or period during which something is widely accepted and circulated.

4.	the fact or quality of being widely accepted and circulated from person to person.

It is interesting to notice that while money is certainly mentioned, first and foremost, currency is a medium of exchange, indicating value does not lie within the value of the coin or dollar intrinsically. So then, who decides what manner of exchange is to be employed and what value is to be placed upon the denominations used?

As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

In social media terms, Twitter has followers, FriendFeed has subscribers, and Plurk has Karma… they are all status symbols signifying importance or authority… Who places value on them? The participants of those communities, of course. If you are not fond of social media, or have not been exposed to it, then you might ask why such trivial things matter?

Let’s broaden our analogy: For those in web-based marketing, often termed search engine optimization (SEO), maybe it’s unique visitors (uniques) or conversation rates. For those in brick-and-mortar businesses maybe it’s customer retention rates, revenue per employee, or sales per square foot.

All in all, we all seek to assign value to our transactions and why? Quite simply, to survive.

We live in a world where everything has a price, and in assigning value to your product or service you attempt to broadcast your worth to your clients, to the world, and most importantly - to you, yourself.

Ah, now there is the rub. Up until this point, this is all basic economics, right? Well, have you ever considered the reason you are so caught up in trying to inflate your value is to take a place of superiority for yourself - above others?

Let me give you a more personal example:

I started this blog several months ago for a reason, I would even call it a cause. My goal was two-fold:

1. I wanted people to know who I was.
2. I wanted to share my thoughts with others, and encourage debate and discussion.

I dug in, and learned more and more about blogging tools, tricks, and sought any advice I could get. I worked long hours building this site, and had quite a few frustrations. Then somewhere along the way, I discovered I was spending more time pumping my blog - pumping myself up - and less time creating content. I found I was spending less time enjoying myself.

My currency had become me… pushing me, pumping me up, talking about me… Does that sound as self-centered as it looks while I’m writing this?

Now here is my adjusted goal:

1. I wanted people to know who I was.
2. I want to share my thoughts with others, and encourage debate and discussion.

Now that I am focused on connecting with people, I am much more focused on creating content and having fun. I have rediscovered the joy of interacting with others simply for that - not with ulterior motive in mind. Where the currency I had traded in used to be a currency of “me”, I have learned that trading in a currency of “you” actually betters my experience, and comes back to me ten fold.

So as you travel through your life, ask yourself, “What currency do I trade in?” If it is a currency of “me”, you may find that you are feeding your ego and starving your soul.

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. Ken is also the Director of Technology at Kearns Business Solutions.

As a citizen of the blogosphere, and being technology-minded, I enjoy trying new things. Plurk was one of those new things.

While some may argue it was too weird, some may maintain it was a Twitter knock-off, and some may just not like it - Plurk has a very interesting interface and an even better community.

I first gave Plurk whirl back in early June, and even wrote a little piece comparing its features against that of Twitter, called Twitter = Ego; Plurk = Fun.

So why say goodbye? Well, there are a few reasons.

1. Noise:

I am attempting to cut through the noise, and social outlets like Plurk and Twitter generate an awful lot of that, in my humble opinion. With the amount of information coming at me, I need a very succinct way of pairing back what I don’t need - almost an RSS reader for social media - if you will.

2. Connect:

I am attempting to connect to others, in a meaningful way. While the community in Plurk is wonderful, I would liken it to happy hour at a bar. If you want to unwind and have some interesting conversations - with LOTS of tangents - then Plurk is definitely the place for you.

3. Time:

I want to learn things from others, and I get this when reading others blogs or parsing through my subscriptions in FriendFeed. Plurk was very good at this, as long as I was willing to put in a copious amount of time.

This was not productive for me. I need to invest my time wisely with all of the various priorities in my life. I’m sure each of you, my readers, can relate to this - and make these decisions more and more now as well.

In general, this was not a hard decision to make when I stepped back and analyzed my goals relative to where I am spending my time. There is only a finite amount of time and energy I have, and while each and every community out there is wonderful in its own right, I can only be part of so many.

To the A-Team at Plurk, my hats off for creating something very interesting - but it’s time I said, “good night.”

Watch-out Twitter - you may have to be next…

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. Ken is also the Director of Technology at Kearns Business Solutions.

For those of you fanboys (and fangirls) of FireFox 3, this post is for you:

As many of my valued readers might know, I have been following various social media outlets for a few months, with some mixed results.

Let me be frank when I say that I think there is a log of egotistical stuff going on in the world of social media, but I have met some really nice people through channels like Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, and so on.

Twitter, in specific, is rather interesting in that I typically post little observations or aggravations about the world at large. For those of you that don’t know what Twitter is, it is what is termed as a micro-blogging site; more to the point, it is a way for you to post little tidbits in 140 words or less.

So it was that I found myself aggravated with some goings on of FF3. It would at some points sieze up, or not allow CAPTCHA’s to be displayed properly on some blogs… This was rather frustrating.

So I blabbed about it on Twitter - and Firefox Answered.

At first firefox_answers gave me what I thought was a mundane answer, uninstall your plug-ins…

“Gee, really? What fantastic advice,” I said… and got a response back. In fact, I got several responses back, much quicker than any of the other twitterers (yes that is what they are called).

… and I ended up enjoying some crow to go with my serving of humble pie - because even though the plugin was only meant to help render FriendFeed a little more cleanly - it stepped on some other pages toes.

Here are the take-aways:

1. Those companies in Tech using social media to talk with their customers are very savvy.
2. Social media used in this fashion creates a very warm customer experience.
3. I should quit thinking I know everything about technology just because I’m in technology - and be a little more humble when instructed to do something by the official semi-official Mozilla FireFox Twitter Technical Support Account.

… it was a plug-in … come on cut me some slack!

So I’m changing my default browser back to FF3 to look for some more flaws… I know, great attitude right? Well, now I have @firefox_answers.

Reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss meets Tim Burton interface, Plurk gets a big plug from some A-listers and takes off with fans and foes alike.

For those of you that have been watching the web for the past few days, a new social site has gained in popularity thanks to Leo and Scoble called Plurk. Plurk has seemingly begun to step in where Twitter has begun to falter under scalability issues. While it is not without its problems, it seems to offer a richer user interface (UI) along with some nice hooks, like Karma (discussed a little later).

Where did the name Plurk come from you ask? Well, akan from the Plurk Blog had this to say:

Plurk. Yuck. Sounds so muck like pork. or bork. We understand there’s sort of a love-hate thing going on with our name. It’s understandable but we’d like to give you some colour on what’s behind the name so you are not as quick to brush it off.

• Plurk as stalkerati central: People + Lurk= Plurk
• Plurk as an amalgam of Play + Work: Play-Work. Plurk is what scientists do. It is the enthusiastic, energetic application of oneself to the task at hand as a child excitedly plays; it is the intense arduous, meticulous work of an artist on their life-long masterpiece; it is joyful work. (credit)
• Plurk as acronym: Peace, Love, Unity, Respect, Karma
• Verb potential: “Oh I googled this –> Oh I plurked it” Easy enough to wrap around in any form. Plurked, plurking, plurkers, plurks. Little p, big P, it’s catchy, snippy and sweet.

So next time you say Plurk, don’t say ewww, but chew on it for a little longer and have a happy day (at work, plurking the day away!).

An Overview:

Plurk is organized in a timeline format and threaded comments, or Plurks. Twitter, however is organized in a sequential format and only provides a first-in-first-out (FIFO) format for messages. The “river” allows you to scroll through a time line of conversations and expand each thread to view other “plurkers” comments.

What is interesting about the posts is that they are comprised of several key components:

1. Avatar - A picture to add some flavor and a nice way to filter only your posts in the timeline.
2. Handle - A link to your bio
3. Action Verb - A verb that allows you to express a little more emotion (e.g. Changeforge “is”, “thinks”, “loves”).
4. Message - The message in 140 characters or less
5. Number of responses - indicates you have responses - or people replurking to your plurk.
6. Lastly, you get friendly reminders about updates and the ability to filter on all plurks or just responses, or just your plurks.

The Stats & Karma:

There are the normal stats like number of plurks, responses, and join date. However, the creators of Plurk are definitely geared towards spreading the word as indicated by some other stats like friends invited and profile views.

Also the makers of Plurk have added a fun game outside of the normal accumulation of friends, called Karma. Karma is achieved through various acts like number of referrals and overall activity. The exact calculation hasn’t been cracked just yet, which is probably best.

However, you can even subscribe to a robot that tracks your Karma and ranks you against other Plurkers. Beware, you can actually loose Karma as well, adding an element of slight risk to the mix.

Is Plurk a Twitter knock-off?

Well, let’s see, there is the fact that you can’t type in more than 140 characters, and an input screen that is very similar in nature. You have friends that you follow and that can follow you.

You will have to be the judge. Many Twitter fans accuse Plurk of being a knock-off of Twitter geared towards 14-year old Neopets. This might very well be true. Some feel the interface is great, and some feel it gets in the way.

Integration:

Plurker currently offers IM integration with a few clients like Yahoo! and Google Talk, and has a mobile version that seems to be a bit spotty at times. However, the real power for Plurker will come in its integrations. If it cannot cross the chasm to offer users more ways to interact with the community and find information in the fashion they choose, it will quickly loose steam and/or never reach the critical mass that now seems to plague Twitter.

Summary:

What I can say is there is a great amount of potential. With the influx of traffic, the Plurker team had a tough time with scaling, but made some quick adjustments and seemed to get back on track.

But what I think I like most about Plurker so far is the simple and raw fact that the community is so much nicer. Twitter seems to be plagued with A-listing egos and has meandered into a bloggers billboard for their latest blog. I use it for that too, don’t get me wrong, but there doesn’t seem to be the inquisitive substance I had hoped for many months ago when I started.

With Plurker, people seem to be genuinely interested in discovering each other and about each other some some degree. It has not become the stomping ground for the “ego’s” afoot to discuss why they like FriendFeed or Twitter - ad nauseum. It is a place to ask simple questions and get fun answers.

Plainly put - Plurk is not Twitter. Plurk is not revolutionary. Plurk is fun.

Where does this road lead?

If you liked this post, you might also want to read how my adventure in Plurk turned out.

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. Ken is also the Director of Technology at Kearns Business Solutions.