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**ChatsUSA** · 06-05-2008, 01:40 PM

With a lot of focus on social media sites these days one of the biggest newcomers that is becoming more and more popular is Twitter.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web site, via the Twitter web site, short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twhirl or Facebook.

Twitter has gained popularity in the bloggersphere thanks to several high profile bloggers like Leo Laporte, Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo. Each of these bloggers has over 10,000 people following their updates on the site. Unfortunately for Twitter their new found popularity has not been without problems. The service regularly struggles, goes offline and features get disabled. The backend has not been able to scale as much as the company had liked. TechCrunch used to post about these weekly but got bored of keeping everyone up to date once the company decided to open a status page for the problems.

Recently a new service popped up which is now taking the focus of the blogosphere, Plurk. Plurk is funded, based in Ontario, Canada, and has a team of seven people working on it at the moment, so you could call it a small company right now.

Plurk takes the Twitter idea of short updates and builds on it with better visual elements (a neat timeline) and many more features. The service seems fast, smart and has a great UI. Whether it can scale well remains to be seen but recently there has been a lot more signing up for Plurk and it has handled the increase well.

The question remains is Plurk a Twitter killer? If it gets the same kind of attention that Twitter has then it certainly has the ability to. The company needs to build a good API and allow for external sites to grab the data and then it will be in a position to truly rival twitter. What do you guys think, do you prefer plurking or twittering?

View: Plurk

View: Twitter

Read full story...

Scrump · 06-05-2008, 11:08 PM

Ooo, some competition for Twitter!

**Jonathan** · 06-06-2008, 12:12 AM

Have you used it yet scrump? It is pretty cool. But I haven't found an application like twhirl for it yet. The graphic timeline is pretty sweet.

I'm "compu" on there.

- Jonathan

Scrump · 06-06-2008, 02:30 AM

I've checked it out, but have yet to sign up... Yeah, the time line is nice, I was looking through some of the accounts on there. May just sign up by the end of the night!

Scrump · 06-06-2008, 03:09 AM

Ok, joined and I'm "Scrumpy" on there.

**Jonathan** · 06-06-2008, 09:40 AM

After I bit of googleing ... I found this: Plurk Firefox Sidebar | Blog on a Stick

Haven't used it much yet, but it seems like a good solution.

Scrump · 06-06-2008, 11:23 PM

Gonna have to set it up and see how well it works!

06-05-2008, 01:40 PM	#1 (permalink)

ChatsUSA Management Posts: 23,493 Join Date: Feb 2005 Age: 5	Is Plurk the Twitter killer? With a lot of focus on social media sites these days one of the biggest newcomers that is becoming more and more popular is Twitter. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web site, via the Twitter web site, short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twhirl or Facebook. Twitter has gained popularity in the bloggersphere thanks to several high profile bloggers like Leo Laporte, Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo. Each of these bloggers has over 10,000 people following their updates on the site. Unfortunately for Twitter their new found popularity has not been without problems. The service regularly struggles, goes offline and features get disabled. The backend has not been able to scale as much as the company had liked. TechCrunch used to post about these weekly but got bored of keeping everyone up to date once the company decided to open a status page for the problems. Recently a new service popped up which is now taking the focus of the blogosphere, Plurk. Plurk is funded, based in Ontario, Canada, and has a team of seven people working on it at the moment, so you could call it a small company right now. Plurk takes the Twitter idea of short updates and builds on it with better visual elements (a neat timeline) and many more features. The service seems fast, smart and has a great UI. Whether it can scale well remains to be seen but recently there has been a lot more signing up for Plurk and it has handled the increase well. The question remains is Plurk a Twitter killer? If it gets the same kind of attention that Twitter has then it certainly has the ability to. The company needs to build a good API and allow for external sites to grab the data and then it will be in a position to truly rival twitter. What do you guys think, do you prefer plurking or twittering? View: Plurk View: Twitter Read full story...

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