10 Minute Guide to Plurk – Part 1

There aren’t many products over the years that have made me say “Wow!”

My first Nintendo system did, my first DS did. Sixdegrees.com, the first online social network did, StumbleUpon did, and now Plurk has.

Don’t get me wrong, there are other products that I enjoy using, and quite a few I’ll brag about, but these are the ones that exceeded my expectations enough to turn me into a fan.

When I first started using Plurk, I figured it was another Twitter clone. Like Twitter, you can only use 140 characters each time, like Twitter, you can get messages over your cell phone, like Twitter you can receive messages over IM…and kind of like Twitter, their IM program is down.

I can’t remember what convinced me to go back and take a second look at Plurk, but I do know that when I did, I was hooked.

Twitter is a great work site. There are a lot of people there who won’t “get” Plurk. It’s scrolling timeline and raging chats will throw them off. To them I say, “You’re missing out. Don’t judge before you get your feet wet.”

For those who are brave enough to spend a few days exploring, hopefully this guide will help ease the transition.

In order to not miss anything, I asked my friends on Plurk to share some of the questions they’ve had. When I mention a question, I’ll also link to that person’s plurk page.

First is registering. Plurk is still in beta, so you need a code in order to try it. By using this code, you’ll also be added to my fans list, so you can see what I post. Feel free to add me as a friend as well if you’d like. (I’ll discuss the difference between friends and fans in a minute.)

Please, once you register, add an avatar. I know, I discuss this every time, but seriously this is one of the best ways to get known from site to site. You can’t always manage to keep the same username (there are sites where I have to register as Teegers instead of Teeg because they don’t allow 4 letter names, for instance), but you can always be recognized by your avatar. Especially if you’re doing marketing or serious networking, this is very important.

Okay, now you’re ready to plurk, right? Uh, not really. Like Twitter, the first thing you need is someone to talk to.

You’re already used to the friend/fan system, so this is all old hat. Except that Plurk decided to take it a step further. On Plurk, you can actually be both a friend AND a fan. Or you can be a friend who doesn’t follow plurks. Confused yet?

DoshDosh asked today, “what’s the difference between adding someone ‘as a friend’ and ‘adding as a fan’?” and LindaZ asked “I now see that you can choose not to follow a friend’s plurks, does that change them into a fan?”

The answer is a matter of how you can contact people, but I think LindaZ put it best when she rephrased my answer, “so basically you can friend everyone and if it gets too noisy, just don’t follow their plurks/timelines….You can private message and clique an [unfollowed] friend, but not a fan.“

Once you get used to the system, this is very nice. Let’s say you have a friend who’s getting married. All her plurks (original messages on Plurk) lately seem directed to her soon-to-be husband and you’re getting tired of all the mushy stuff. Instead of removing her as a friend and possibly hurting her feelings, you can simply unfollow her plurks and they won’t show up on your timeline anymore. She’s still a friend, you can still send messages to her, but you won’t have to deal with all the sweet nothings showing up on your bar. Then, once the wedding is over and reality kicks in, you can go back and follow as she’s getting used to all the changes of married life (just don’t tell her, “I told you so”.

LiamVictor (who also has a wonderful page on StumbleUpon) said that he didn’t “understand why you’d want to add yourself as a fan of someone instead of a friend.” I suspect this has to do in part with the karma system (more in a minute) and if you’re unsure that someone wants you as a friend, it might be safer to add yourself as a fan first, and respond to some of their plurks so they get to know you. RogueTess added that she’s “added as a fan cuz I’m shy! … I prefer to fly under the radar.”

I should probably discuss the Plurk timeline now. With everything about Plurk, this is the thing that seems to take everyone the longest to get used to. We’re used to pages going up and down, not sideways. Truejerseygirl says “the most confusing thing was the horizontal format for plurks….its SO overwhelming.”

But Plurk’s timeline is great for seeing when a post was started. Plus, it gives them an easy way to differentiate responses from the rest of the messages, since you only see responses by clicking on the orginal plurk, and the replies
are in the more standard up and down format.

One of the things that it took me a bit to truly understand on Plurk, is how the chat system works. If I chat, only friends and fans will see it, and unlike twitter, I can’t @ anyone to have the message brought to their attention. So, I wondered, how do I make friends?

The simple answer is you make friends by replying to other people’s posts. When I reply to a post made by Huna, all of her friends who read that post see my answer. After a while, they start recognizing me, and before long, we’ve become friends as well. So, the more replies you make on Plurk, the more friends you’ll make.

And Plurk encourages this. In fact, they suggest you don’t make more than 30 original plurks in a day, but reply to posts instead. In order to help encourage people to follow this, Plurk uses a Karma system.

Each time you earn a little Karma, you get a new ability, whether it’s adding a note to the top of your Plurk homepage, getting new emoticons such as a dancing banana , or being able to change your background colors, or even put a new Plurk creature in the corner of your page.

Unfortunately, it’s rather easy to lose Karma too. Not responding for a while, adding someone as a friend and having them not accept, or even losing a friend will all drop your karma. Unless you are on a mission to have one of the top karma scores and be listed on the “Interesting plurkers” page, I really don’t see much use for karma once you’ve gotten the emoticons. Personally, I’d love to see a way to share karma so that if someone is sick or has to be away for a while, they don’t come back to find the dancing banana has gone to find a new home.

One more question, and then I’ll leave the rest for tomorrow. Shadeofmelon said, “this is silly, but I have no idea how to post my response after I typed it up.” It doesn’t sound silly at all, especially if you’ve just come from Twitter. When you are writing an original message, you can hit the big red Plurk button, but for a response, you HAVE to hit enter (this also works on original plurks, so don’t hit enter until you’re ready for it to be posted).