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.

So what’s so great about all of these social media platforms like FriendFeed, Twitter, etc.? Back at the beginning of April, I signed up for a FriendFeed account (ChangeForge). I decided to join the experiment first hand to see what’s it’s all about.

Well, to be truthful, it seems like I’ve been subscribed much longer than just 2 months.

Scoble wrote a post about news v. noise (link). The premise was a simple question of whether you enjoy information from 1 of 2 sources: 

1) news, an organized stream of information from “reputable sources”, or

2) noise, the chatter in the blogosphere.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I enjoy the former more than the latter, BUT I have come to learn that social media sites and meta-aggregators are wonderful ways to find new content that I would never have found otherwise.

Think of it… you are 1 person trying to find things interesting through traditional media outlets, various e-mails, or you might even be using some sights like MySpace or FaceBook already.

So what would something like FriendFeed or Twitter bring to the table?

Think of this… you now have dozens or hundreds of individuals combing the Internet for things you enjoy and posting links back to their source. This is the beautiful thing I have come to love about FriendFeed or Twitter.

These sites do not give you that 1-on-1 feel like an Instant Messaging client might, but you can gain some wonderful links to new information, and that branch can take you to many other sources of information. It’s almost as if you are becoming part of the root system of a large tree seeking more and more sources of minerals and water.

Social Media is not without its issues; it does tend to be a little “high school” in that users tend to become incensed at the drop of the hat, it seems. It is also my opinion you need a program like AlertThingy, TWhirl, or Feedalizer to keep a little more interactive feel.

Nonetheless, it is a bold new frontier I have not regretted becoming part of. I am still refining who I follow, but this practice is, and should be, part of any evolution. Give it a try, and dive in.

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.

There has been a lot of buzz around the blogosphere today on why Facebook isn’t getting along with Google. Scoble wrote an interesting post:

There’s a TON of money in that little tree and the hundreds of millions of little trees that YOU have added into Facebook and MySpace and other places.

How do I know that? Well, there’s a little stealth company that I’ve started hearing about. Media6.

A friend told me about them. They figured out that if, say, Mike Arrington buys something, that his friends are two to 10 times more likely than the general public to buy the same thing. Take that into advertising on Facebook: if Mike clicks on, say, a CocaCola ad, Media6 knows that his friends are far more likely to click on that ad than the rest of the 100 million people on Facebook.

I bet Facebook is building its own internal database of exactly the same data too.

Truth is your social graph tells the world a HUGE amount about you. Facebook doesn’t want you to move that other places easily.

Translation: there are billions of dollars at stake here.

Connectedness is a funny thing. There is a fine balance between too much and just enough. Since the online community has demonstrated it doesn’t want to pay for most services, advertisement is the only real method of sustaining the continuation of the services.

Naturally, extremely targeted ads are on the horizon. With more information now available about you and your habits, it is becoming easier for marketers and advertisers to determine how to angle in on you.

This reminds me of an article I wrote some time ago, Are We Too Connected to Social Media, in response to a post by Dan over at BizTechTalk.

Well, the technology and business world is a buzz with all of the latest prognostications on whose the loser and whose the winner. I must say, I’m a bit disappointed with Scoble’s “proof” on the matter - the stock market?

I’m not a big fan of Ballmer, I certainly agree Microsoft needs a web strategy, and Yahoo! is going to go in the tank if they don’t get a clue - but I just don’t agree with using the stock as an indicator of whose right and whose wrong. These are a bunch of analysts on Wall Street who freak out when the wind blows the wrong direction.

Who are we kidding here, that was just a merge that would’ve ended up like Time-Warner and AOL - a culture clash akin to Clash of the Titans!

I will say Scoble is on track with the real winner in all of this being Google, but does that really take a brain child. I think Ballmer was flat out stupid for considering the Yahoo! purchase in the first place. But, Scoble - buddy - I thought better of your cognitive resources than to start yipping right along with the wall street dogs my friend!

Well, it looks like Scoble did it again. In his article ‘Why enterprise software isn’t sexy‘, Scoble sends a shot across the bow at Bill Gates, calling him out on whining about the lack of enterprise software coverage in the blogosphere. Albeit an older article, I found it compelling, so here are some thoughts…

Scoble asks:

Well, how many people in the world actually buy business software? … Instead, let’s look at the business of journalism or even of blogging. We’re paid to deliver page views. Advertisers call it “CPM” (cost per thousand viewers). Now, what’s going to get more of you interested? Consumer software that you actually have a role in adopting or purchasing or enterprise software where some CIO somewhere else in your organization decides on?

Scoble bemoans having to use SAP because some CIO in his ivory tower made a business decision and forced him to use it. Why not look at end user adoption as a key metric? Can you live by the subjective metric of customer satisfaction? Embrace this simple fact, when you really meet the needs AND wants of your customers, it becomes a game changer… it’s ultimately the greatest metric for true success (see my previous posting Are You Focused on What Your Customers Need, or What They Want?)

Scoble also asks:

Any of you have any ideas on how to make business software sexy?

Sexy? Some of the pundits are asking why make enterprise software sexy? That’s not the point… well not exactly. Maybe I’m sick in the head, but I think it’s uber-sexy to get paid well to help a business run well and keep customers (internal and external) happy!

My contention is business software doesn’t necessarily need to be sexy, but it definitely needs a PR make-over!