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Kwippy is a fun new service that allows you to post comments from Gtalk or Yahoo! It is very easy to get set up on kwippy, which is nice, and makes it a great site for introducing people to microblogging.

So, let’s get started!

Kwippy is in private beta right now. Beta means that the site is running, but might be taken down occasionally for upgrades, changes, etc. Of course, anymore, there’s not a lot of difference between a site that is ready for public use and one that’s in beta. Look at all the updates Microsoft sends out.

A private beta is one where you have to have an invite to join it. On kwippy, an invite has to be mailed to you, so either post a message on here and mention that you’d like an invite, or if you prefer, go to kwippy’s main page and ask for an invite to be sent to you.

Here are a few simple steps to give you a quick start to using kwippy:

1. Once you get your invite, click on the link and go register.
2. After you’ve registered, the next thing you should do is add kwippy to your IM.
   

   Click on Dashboard to bring up the IM instructions. Currently kwippy works with Gtalk and Yahoo! but there are plans for other IMs in the future.

   
3. After you have your IM set up, go back to your kwippy homepage and you’ll be asked if you want to integrate status changes with your kwippy page. Doing this will automatically post on kwippy whenever you make a status change on your IM.
   
   Note that you need to click the X, not the word here.
4. Now you’re ready to post! With kwippy, you have 2 choices. Either send a post to kwippy over your IM or go to your kwippy page and write a post.
   
5. Whenever someone responds to your kwips, you will be notified by IM. You can also choose to be notified by e-mail.
6. You can also respond to others kwips on the website. If you look at the picture above, you’ll see “go comment” underneath each. Clicking on that takes you to a kwip comment page. By the way, don’t worry if you have a lot to say, kwippy doesn’t have a text limit.
   

Now that everything’s set up, here are some other things to check out:

A social site is about friends, and kwippy is no exception. You have unlimited invites if you want to ask all your friends to come play and there are already a lot of great kwippers on the site.

Kwippy has a great search feature that allows you to either search for kwips or for people, so it’s easy to find friends from other sites. By the way, feel free to add me as a friend too.

To add or remove a friend, look to the right on the kwips board, directly underneath “everyone’s kwips” and click to follow or unfollow.

You can also click on change settings on a friend’s page and choose to subscribe to their kwips if you’d like to be notified over IM whenever they make one.

If you want to remember a kwip written either by you or someone else, you can mark it as a favorite. Simply click on the heart icon underneath the kwip.

To view kwips that you’ve marked as favorites, go to your page and look underneath your avatar. Click where it says the number of favorite kwips you have to go to your favorite kwips page. If someone marks one of your kwips as a favorite, you will receive a message letting you know.

You can also visit someone’s page and send a private kwip to them. You will get a notification when they respond to the message you sent, or when someone sends you a private kwip. If you are trying to reach a friend who hasn’t been on lately, you can also send them a Buzz, which is a kwip sent to the person and shows up in their inbox and as an IM message.

Just a couple more items to mention. Just like plurks and tweets, kwips are searchable on Google. They’re not showing up yet, but that’s because kwippy is a new site and likely still getting indexed.

Each page on kwippy can be subscribed to via RSS feed, so you can subscribe to your posts, friends’ posts, or even a single kwip that you want to keep up with the comments on.

In addition to kwippy’s search features, you can also find posts by using the url. Kwippy has one of most unique url set ups that I’ve ever seen, with the goal of making them “human readable”. So, if you know who wrote a kwip and when they wrote it, you can go right where you need to go to find the kwip.

Finally, if you are a fan of ping.fm, you’ll be happy to know that kwippy is there too! If you’re not on ping.fm and want to be, the most current code is “thispingsforyou”.

Welcome to part 2 of the Guide to Plurk. If you missed part 1, you can find it here.

It didn’t take me long once I started using Plurk to realize that I needed karma. Okay, maybe I could actually live without it, but I definitely wanted some, I needed emoticons!

There are a few ways to gain karma on Plurk. One is to write plurks that others respond to (just remember to write 30 or less per day).

Another is to respond to others’ plurks. Inviting friends also adds karma (have I shared my link with you yet? :D) as does making new friends who are already on Plurk.

The first thing I tried was transferring all my friends from Twitter. “This will be easy,” I thought as filled in my Twitter information, rubbing my hands with glee at thought of oodles of karma I’d get from adding friends.

Transferring friends from Twitter DOES NOT make you friends on Plurk, I discovered to my dismay. It doesn’t even send your friend a note asking them to confirm your friendship. Instead it adds you as a fan of theirs.

Now I mentioned yesterday how confusing Plurk can be about adding fans and friends. Here’s where the issue gets even murkier. Let’s say I look at my fan list and see Connie as a fan. Well, I know and like Connie, so I want to add her as a friend instead. She’s already a fan, so it’s a simple matter of just adding her, right?

I wish! Unlike every other social site I know of, we can actually be fans of each other…without being friends. Even if Connie is a fan, I have to ask to be her friend and she has to confirm our friendship. Clear as mud, right?

It’s actually not as bad as it sounds, once you start using it. Consider it a double opt in friendship, very similar to the ones you get whenever you sign up on a new mailing list.

After I finally figured out the whole twitter friends/fans thing and added a few real friends, I was ready to start writing some original Plurks and replying to other people’s Plurks. And in the process, make some new friends.

Ready to hear from some other Plurkers?

Felix118 said “I missed the tip on how to link names using the @ command….” If you’ve used twitter, this will be habit for you anyway. Which is actually how I discovered it. I made a twitter post on Plurk, and the @ in front of the name disappeared, but the name turned into a like to that person’s page.

If I Plurked:

says to @butterflylitgirl, How are you today? Hope your day has been wonderful!

What will appear is:

Teeg says to butterflylitgirl, How are you today? Hope your day has been wonderful!

Green_homemaker asked “is there a way to private message on Plurk? That’s my burning Question!”

I’ll admit, I had to ask this one too. Private messaging isn’t intuitive on Plurk (okay most things aren’t intuitive on Plurk).

Thankfully, when I asked how, Dalydose took pity on me, and explained how to do it. “Just click the down arrow next to someone’s username and the option will present itself.”

Sure enough, when I moused over a username, there was a small down arrow. Clicking it gave me some information about the person (in case I hadn’t visited their plurk page), the option to visit their profile, or see their list of friends. And, since yesterday, if you click the arrow on someone’s name, you also have the option to block that person.

Amie mentioned that she wasn’t sure “how to hyperlink text instead of posting urls.”

I can’t remember who it was that taught me how to do this. Wish I could remember so I could give them credit. On Plurk, if you want to link a url, first post your url, then add your link in parenthesis, like this:

I hope no one is disappointed. I just finished part 1 of the http://www.sucomments.com/2008/06/19/10-minute-guide-to-plurk-part-1/ (10 Minute Guide to Plurk). More tomorrow.

Which appears like this:

A nice thing about Plurk, and another huge difference between it and twitter, is that you’re not stuck plurking text. In fact, this is one of the most fun things about Plurk.

On Plurk, I can send a picture or YouTube video and you can see a tiny picture right there on the timeline! And if I use the parenthesis trick above, when you mouse over the picture, you’ll see the title I typed.

Even better, when you click on the picture, it doesn’t take you to another page. Instead, a window opens up and you can view the picture or video right on the page.

On Plurk, more than any other social site I’ve seen since sixdegrees, the saying, “the friend of my friend is my friend” is actually true.

The other day, Dr. Mani (whose blog I thoroughly recommend), joined Plurk. Wanting to help him get started, I introduced him, and within 5 minutes, 9 people had stopped by to say hi, most going on to add him as a friend!

Lest you think this was a special occasion, let me say I’ve introduced several others, every time with similar results. Everyone I’ve met on Plurk so far has been great!

Two more things and then the rest I’ll save for the next post.

RogueTess added the suggestion, “Use MUTE liberally.” Kirako seconded with “Ooh, another [suggestion] would be the muting ability. Not many people see that.”

With so many friendly people on Plurk, and so many from different time zones, it sometimes seems like a third of the plurks say “Good morning” or “Good night.” After repeating myself a couple times on one of these posts, I discovered a perfect use for the mute feature.

When you click on a plurk to reply, if you look to the right, underneath the original plurk, you’ll see a small pink “mute.” (Unfortunately (for this blog post) you can’t mute yourself though.)

Clicking on this does not affect the status of the poster at all, it doesn’t even affect whether you can respond to the plurk. What it does is stops that plurk from notifying you when it updates. You can still read the updates if you want, but you won’t receive any notification of new responses. Which means if you mute after you greet someone, you won’t accidently repeat your greeting when you’re looking at new updates later.

I guess I should stop here and mention a little cream colored box that you’ll often see on the left side of the page, at the bottom of the scroll bar. Right now, the box is telling me that there are 2 new plurks I haven’t read yet, and 262 new responses. I can click either option in the box to view that option. New plurks will add to the timeline, but if you view responses instead, it will only show the plurks with new responses (ie none of the muted plurks).

Finally tonight, Natashcha suggests I mention “permalinking a plurk. I totally missed the link on the bottom for a long time.”

I did the same thing, Natashcha. And even after I saw it, I wasn’t quite sure what would happened when I clicked “plurk page” so hesitated to use it.

What happens is that the whole conversation goes to a new page with its own url.

You can share that url with friends, refer other plurkers to the conversation (thus allowing more than just your own friends list to reply to a post), bookmark it, and even add it to your RSS reader, which is what I do with plurks I want to save.

Believe it or not, there’s still a lot more about Plurk to discuss. Using cliques (which isn’t as high schoolish as the name implies), using Plurk with your cell phone, and tricks to make it easier to find something on the timeline, plus more Plurkers with questions or suggestions.

By the way, if you have a question about Plurk, feel free to ask it here in the comments or add me as a friend on Plurk and ask there, just make sure to let me know where the question is if I don’t happen to see it.