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Let’s get Mobile!
Previous 10 Minute Guides to Plurk:
Part 1 - Getting Started
Part 2 - Let’s Get Plurking
Part 3 - Cliques - The Great Idea With the Awful Name
Part 3a - Printable Emoticon List for Mobile Phones
Come Plurk with me (if you haven’t joined yet, on the first screen, click “Sign In“)

I’m not sure I’m entirely sane trying to write today’s Plurk Guide. You see, last year while we were on a trip, my little one removed my phone from my pocket book and lost it somewhere between NC and NY.

The loss wasn’t discovered until we arrived home that night, and by then of course, it was too late. When you travel with children you have to make several stops along the way, so there was no telling where it disappeared.

Since I’m home most of the time anyway, we put off getting me a phone. Of course NOW it would make things so much easier, but then, I mainly used it for calling Ken (aka Plurkified) in the store whenever we’d gotten separated to figure out where we were supposed to be meeting.

Since I don’t have a mobile phone, I posted on Plurk for help. It wasn’t long before I knew what the address was for the mobile page, how to get there, and even received a picture of a Plurk phone, made for me by TacticalSniper after I threatened to paste a Plurk picture on Ken’s phone and take a picture of it.

So, how does mobile Plurk or mplurking work.

Back a couple weeks ago, when I first asked for Plurk questions, julep67 answered with:

I can’t figure how to text to plurk from my phone. It says in the terms that I can, but I can’t figure it out. Any help would be great.

It wasn’t long after that, that Plurk added a mobile button to the toolbar.

This made it very easy to find your mobile page, just click the button.

A couple updates later though, Plurk changed things again. Now you might see either the mobile plurk button or the button to embed a widget on your plurk page.

If you do get the Embed button instead, you can simply refresh your page until you get the mobile plurk button or go to http://www.plurk.com/m/.

Every time I see the page, I’m reminded a line at the beginning of While You Were Sleeping, “There are a lot of things I remember about my childhood. I just don’t remember it being so orange.

Using this big, orange page is a little different from normal plurking. For one thing, there’s no timeline. Plurks are shown in a normal, slightly boring, up and down mode.

I’m not sure why the numbers are on the bar. Only the first 9 plurks on each page are numbered, and to date I haven’t heard of any real purpose for them.

Edited to add: DarinRMcClure shared with me that “the numbers on the left 1-9 are for mobile navigation via keypad.” Thanks so much, Darin! Feeling silly for not figuring that one out now.

About a week ago, when I asked for comments about mobile Plurk, both shadeofmelon and Angela told me they really wish they could see the plurks which have new responses.

I did some exploring with the mobile timeline today, and unfortunately, the items are still listed in the order received, and not by most frequent comments, which means that you’ll have to jump around the mobile pages to find which all of the new responses.

In order to post, you’ll have to type in the orange box at the top of the screen.

Unlike regular plurks, in mobile plurk you have to set the starting verb if you want to use one. You set it in the small box beside your name. Otherwise, the verb won’t be colored, even if it’s a verb on the list.

Another difference is that there is no number count when you’re typing a plurk. At the end of the bar there is only the Plurk button.

If you go over, you are given an error message when the page tries to load. Unfortunately, I don’t know for sure whether you will keep the plurk you typed in…I suspect that you will, but it would be nice to know.

One really nice thing about mobile plurks is that you can still embed pictures and videos, complete with a mini shot of the posted item.

In order to comment on a mobile plurk, you click the response link, which takes you to a new page:

To respond, once again, write your comment in the orange box, being careful not to exceed 140 letters.

Plurkers Thoughts:

When I sent out a request on Plurk asking people what they like or don’t like about mobile plurking, the answers were interesting.

Both Topsurf and TheNerd mentioned that sometimes in mobile Plurk you can’t send responses, although you can read the original Plurk.

Rammi and miketempleton added an issue I’d heard others mention on other posts:

Sometimes when I click on responses they don’t show up.

Robdubya brought up something interesting that I hadn’t heard mentioned before:

I use iPhone and don’t like that I can’t see the pictures.

Now that made me curious, so to clarify, I asked if smileys show up on the iPhone.

Topsurf responded that moving ones don’t always, while plain ones do, and miketempleton expounded:

It looks like the smileys embedded into plurk show up on my iPhone, but not the custom ones people post.

Now that makes a LOT of sense, since even on regular plurk there’s an issue with some of the renegade smileys either appearing too big or too small.

Evandoyle shared:

Well it’s easy if you have an iPhone or an iPod touch, really easy.

Topsurf and Desertnut agreed and miketempleton added:

I use the iPhone as well, which makes scrolling easy….

Bikeman threw a wrench in the spokes though when he adds:

Here it is a no go on my cell, but can update from my Palm T/X.

Guess when I start looking for a cell phone, I’ll need to test out different ones to see which ones will let me Plurk.

Zsafwan mentioned that he “hates the fact that you can’t add a friend on the Mobile Plurk.”

Miketempleton returned to add:

If you use an @ username in your plurk and click on it, it takes you to the web profile instead of the mobile one.

The more I use the mobile interface, the more I see how decent it really is. It’s no iPhone app, but it works well.

Finally, Ronno971 added “I like to use it to stay connected. It could use more features though.”

If you’d like to see the discussion or compare a mobile discussion to a regular one, here is a normal threaded plurk, and here is the mobile one.

One last note:

You may notice that Mobile Plurk doesn’t offer a list of emoticons. In mobile, you have to type in the emoticon code, ie (s_dance) for . Plurk Guide 3a has a complete, printable list of available emoticons codes and pictures, but please note that using the code without the requirement to unlock it (whether it’s karma or inviting people) will put the word in your plurk instead of the picture, ie. (p_yupi) will show instead of .

So have you used mobile Plurk yet? What are your thoughts on it?

Cliques - The Great Idea with the Awful Name
Want to read the earlier parts? Here are the links.
Part 1 - Getting Started
Part 2 - Let’s Get Plurking
Part 3a - Emoticon Cheat Sheet

Do you remember all the groups there were in school? There were the computer geeks, the rednecks (No, not the Jeff Foxworthy type, I mean the real rednecks…the ones who fit this profile). There were the cheerleaders, of course, and the jocks…and the other jocks, who were into sports, but not THOSE sports, and there were the…

You get the idea.

Because of our school memories, cliques have a bad reputation. Having cliques automatically means that someone is left out.

Using cliques on Plurk is probably one of the biggest reasons so many people keep thinking of it as a teenage site. A LOT of people don’t like the idea of cliques, regardless of what they’re actually used for.

Especially on Plurk, which I can honestly say is the friendliest site I’ve ever been on online, the idea of being left out doesn’t feel good.

Still, I think Plurk Cliques are an absolutely awesome idea, if you can get around the name.

When I asked people what questions they’ve had about Plurk, two people mentioned cliques. Kirako said, “Cliques! It says we’re supposed to be able to filter plurks by clique but I guess that doesn’t work yet. Still would like some answers on it.” and RogueTess said, “Still never made a clique. Everyone can see all friends. Is it the clique feature that makes them different? Hmmm.”

It does say we should be able to filter our timeline, but I’ve tried everything I can think of to get it to work, and nothing happens. I’m guessing that ability hasn’t actually been turned on yet. I have writen the devs, otherwise known as the A-team, to ask how to use this feature and when we’ll be able to do it. As soon as I hear back from them, I will let you know.

So, since they can’t filter the timeline yet, what is their purpose and how do you use them?

Did you know you’ve actually used Cliques before? Oh, they weren’t called that, possibly because most applications we use aren’t written expecting their primary market to be teens.

So, the last time you used them, they may have had the boring name of folders. If you use Gmail, you’ll know them as groups. But by any name, it’s still the same thing:

A selection of people that you can send a message to quickly and easily.

I have one on Gmail for people who don’t mind reading the original version of a story I’ve been working on for a year or so. Typos and all, they get to see it, and let me know what they think. I’m betting that in your e-mail you have a way of separating certain people also.

Skype is the only other chat program that I know that allows you to separate people into groups, but in Skype you have to open a new window to communicate with them.

In Plurk, I just set up a clique using whatever criteria I want, write the clique’s name the same as I would send a private message, and hit Plurk.

If you look at the upper left corner of your plurk screen, you’ll see the options shown above. Each of these will open a pop-up window that you can interact with. To create or edit your cliques, you need to click on “My Friends.”

In the orange box that pops up, you will see a row of tabs. Cliques is the second one. By the way, if you haven’t looked under “Blocked users” yet, you might want to. I know when they added it a few days ago, several users found people blocked that they hadn’t added there.

To create a clique, simply use the “Add new clique” button and type in the name of the group you want to make.

Now you’re ready to start adding members.

If you already know the names of the people you want in your group, this part is easy. Start typing the name of the person you want to add, and Plurk brings up a suggestion box to complete the name for you.

But what if you want to create a list and DON’T know everyone’s name?

This makes things a little harder. Plurk doesn’t give you a list of people to choose from, you have to add names to the box instead, which means you need to know who you’re going to add.

After a bit of experimenting, I found that using the two window method was easiest.

It’s rather hard to tell, but on the left, I have the clique I’m working on creating, and on the right, I have a list of friends. In this screen I’m making a Girls Night Out list (sorry guys, you’re not allowed in this one).

Another easy way to know who to add is to ask. I created four or five cliques just from asking questions such as:

How many plurkers are work (or stay) at home parents?

How many do work with Social Media?

and any other groups I could think of that I might want to send specific messages to at some time or another.

Okay, let’s send a message out to one of our groups.

If you look down at the Plurk bar (where you write your messages), you’ll see a choice that says “Private plurks, languages, & options.”

If you click on it, the area underneath will expand to offer you more choices. The area on the left defines who you’ll send this plurk out to:

To send a message to a clique, make sure you select the bottom option. It’s not selected automatically, so I messed up a couple test plurks by forgetting to select it.

A quick note here. You can actually send a plurk to a clique and other individual friends who might be interested. Just include all the names on the line where I wrote Marketing.

Now, type in your message on the message bar, click the big red Plurk button, and viola, you’ve sent a message to your clique!

One last thought for today. When you send a message to a clique, it goes as a private message. Although private messages do show up on your main plurk screen, often that screen is so busy that they get missed.

You can look to see if you have any private messages (or look at the messages that you’ve sent if you want to check for replies or count how many you’ve sent for the day) by clicking the blue box in the bottom right corner of the scrollbar and choosing which view you want.

Wow, it’s hard to believe we’ve almost finished discussing Plurk. Still to come, mobile plurking and a cheat sheet with plurk hints and resources. If you’re not a friend on Plurk yet, use this link to join and add me (please, send a friend request, Plurk only adds as a fan). Plus, you can still leave any questions I haven’t answered yet, either here or on Plurk.