I was referred to Plurk earlier on by someone on Twitter who said that they were fed up with not being able to have all the features that we were so accustomed to just the other day. With Plurk, first of all, it just sounds like a really bad name. I mean, you can say “what are you Twittering?” and that sounds good and tells your audience something, but with Plurk, what can you say that sounds catchy?

Aside from the name, Plurk has some pretty good features that combines Twitter with another up-and-coming application: Brightkite. Not only can you list in 140 text characters what you’re doing, simliar to Twitter, but you can upload photos and videos associated with that update and share with your contacts. Definitely a big plus compared to Twitter.

From an aesthetic standpoint, it looks relatively clean, but somewhat busy. Twitter was simple in their design and you could see your followers and their updates. That’s basically all that people required. However, Plurk includes a timeline at the top -half of the page where you can see your followers and their updates and when specifically their updates were. For better or worse, Plurk has a definite advantage over Twitter right now.

Now keep in mind that Plurk is still in its infancy and Twitter has had some time to grow and make some serious significant updates, but Plurk allows you to follow people without being their friend. Just become a “fan” of them and you’ll be able to keep track of their updates. If you add your GTalk or other IM application to Plurk, you should be able to update your status that way, but unfortunately, you’ll also get EVERY update that your people makes which makes it kind of annoying.

Perhaps just a fancy feature to have as well, Plurk offers you the chance to earn more “karma”. They term it as:

Every plurker has his/her own karma value. It is recalculated every day and falls within these intervals:

• 0.00 to 21.00: You are in the state of creation
• 21.00 to 41.00: You are in the state of maintenance
• 41.00 to 61.00: You are enlightened
• 61.00 to 81.00: You are so close to Plurk Nirvana
• 81.00 to 100.00: You have reached Plurk Nirvana!

Your karma score is directly influenced by you and your friends Plurk activity. The more active you are, the more points you’ll get. Using various features of Plurk such as instant messaging or uploading a profile image will also help.

So basically, karma in Plurk is just a novelty status item for people to add to their daily enjoyment. This is probably an unnecessary item unless the creators decide to implement some other reward-based value add system at a later time. And one thing that most applications dealing with the social web should probably think about is an easy way to find your friends. Unfortunately when I set up my account, I had an awful time adding friends by search. Instead, I needed to physically type their user names (oftentimes a guess) into the Plurk URL path and then find them.

I’d say go ahead and sign-up for Plurk. There are definitely rooms for improvement in terms of features and that can only lead to better services for its users. So sign up today -if anything, it’ll give you some time away from Twitter while it’s down, but won’t prevent you from going cold turkey. You can find me on Plurk too, so stop by and say hi!

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