Plurk.
Plurk is a made up word and a fantasy creature. Plurk is more; it’s the latest chat and conversation tool on the market, and plurky just about describes it.
Plurk takes a whole new spin on on chat though as you can see. Chat isn’t just streaming up the window as with Twitter, Pownce or IM. The flow is left to right. Like little boats of conversation floating down the river, the watchful eye of the plurk beast overseeing it.
Already you can imagine it takes a bit of getting used to, but now check out the chat popup.
Each conversation box opens up, and a complete thread can take place there. The whole of that conversation is contained inside that box. The neatest thing is it’s a live update box. As folks comment back in it, it updates while you watch.
This feature is especially interesting when the plurk message is a private one or to a clique. Then it’s not even visible except to those invited into it. The box becomes your own private chat room.
Karma! Just one of the interesting features of plurk is Karma. You, me, the guy with the rat fetish, we all earn karma. Let me just say, the karma wars are on.
Karma is earned through some obvious activities. Adding friends, inviting people, and posting messages all seem to have a positive affect on your karma. You can’t always tell though, as karma points are only updated about twice each day. The notes are fuzzy on when updates occur.
So what’s the point of karma? Well unlike regular social networks, such as Twitter, or Facebook, plurk doesn’t open all of its features to new members. As your karma increases, more features, really customizations, become available.
Customizations include changing your backgrounds, cool chat icons, including dancing bananas, picking out your version of the plurk creature, and naming your plurk page. Those are most of the things that get unlocked, and it seems obvious there are more to be found.
The whole unlocking thing, coupled with the ever moving stream of messages, give plurk a game like feel. At first this is fun and appealing to almost everyone it seems. The problem is that karma updates so slowly that for most folks, they are unable to unlock anything until their second day on plurk, and even then just one or two items.
The other downside to making it so game like is that the aggressive gaming of the system is already occurring. You’ll see folks with several hundred friends and thousands of messages sent. You’ll see threads of conversation going into the hundreds of follow on comments. People are hunting down karma like it was the next big thing. Remind you of WoW?
So the game like feel may not be for everyone, but overall plurk is an interesting take on conversation online. I find it is a lot more interactive than Twitter or Pownce, and with the built in chat features, more fun to actually use.
I’ll be putting a follow up post together just about the chat text and link features. Feel free to share your best and favorite ones here, as well as your take on using plurk. Please, jump in and share, and post your plurk me link.
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