Why I Plurk, Again

I’ve discussed this before, but there are inherently different social interactions that happen in different social media tools.  These are facilitated by the differences in the user interface.

Yesterday, Brian Kerr posted this little thing on Plurk (source).  Plurk’s UI allows you to post pictures that are actually visible.

What came next?  A nice little discussion that took 24 hours to mature.  The threading and alerts in Plurk made that possible.  With Twitter, the value-add of the conversation would have been lost.  Twitter is such a temporal tool, without conventions like @ or # tags, threading is impossible.

Here is the Plurk discussion:

Context is often driven by the circumstances in which the context itself is generated.  Your User Interface, like Twitter’s, may have marvelous impacts on how certain types of communication are conducted – but they do not help with all kinds of communication.

There is no Tower of Babel User Interface.

In this thread, the context starts with a pesky cat looped cartoon and ends with a discussion of non-attachment. What @mitten dubs the “kitteh paradox” after Brian defines the core issue – happiness is transitory if you are attached to a certain definition of happiness (cereal or sitting on the table). 

This contextual evolution is primarily due to the Plurk UI which allows this thread to maintain itself over the course of hours or days.  I still use Twitter every day, but I also use Plurk – simply because these fundamental UI differences yield fundamentally different types of conversations.

Technorati Tags: twitter,plurk,brian kerr,laura fisher,non-attachment,user interface,user experience,social media

Comments

[Edward]

You use Plurk because people feel free to be silly on Plurk, as opposed to Twitter where everyone has their professional marketing hat on at least some of the time.

There's value in Plurk in part because it's hard to build a Professional Brand Identity there, and it's not search engine optimized so the SEO spammers haven't colonized it.

[mehitabel]

I wish I had been online yesterday when that convo was going on--it definitely resonates with me. Of course, I have a cat who would do exactly what the cartoon cat is doing. One of the things I've learned over the years is to savor the fleeting moments of happiness, because life has a way of interfering. Taking the time to appreciate what I have when I have it, whether it's a cat asleep on my lap or a baby giving me wet kisses, helps me through the times that aren't so good.

[Neil]

Jim, I went through a similar topic of discussion with contacts on Jaiku; we were making cases for and against @replies & threaded replies, and #some_word (a feed any old person can participate in simply by including #some_word in the body of their status update) and #some_group (an administrated 'group', to which only authorized members can contribute their status updates).

It could be boiled down to: Should the latest 'speech' in a network always be pushed to the top of the interface, ignoring whether or not it is a status update or a response, or should there be a hierarchy, within which replies to a status update are tucked underneath the respective status update.

Re. Plurk usage; I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying Plurk and finding time to use it alongside Twitter.

[Fiona]

Plurk can be more convivial because it encourages interaction within threads.

Twitter's major failing is that when you reply to someone (@ them) it replies to their last tweet, even though you may be replying to their second last tweet etc. It can be amusing (Dick: Bacon and eggs for breakfast? Dick: And in other news my neighbour needs to be shot for playing Mariah Carey so early in the morning. Jane: Excellent idea. I may just join you in that.)

Just my $0.002 (in this global economic crisis!)

[Dave]

Thanks for the Buddhism link, Jim. My latest saying is "You can't make a cat walk backwards!"