Comments on: Can Twitter and Plurk co-exist?

By: emersondirect

emersondirect — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:53:44 +0000

@Mack…overestimating your customer loyalty, no matter how great the brand is, is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a marketer. I wonder if Twitter assumes that their outages and technical issues are no big deal. Who at twitter thought that not communicating with their users during these problems was a good idea?

@Jason I wanted to think some more real world 21st examples, but for some reason the Hatfield/McCoy analogy came out…

@Beth mack brings up a great point in that they are the first, but they will not be the last…Someone will take the best elements of each and create something better…it’s inevitable.

By: Mack Collier

Mack Collier — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:28:44 +0000

Right now, Twitter and Plurk are giving completely different experiences. This is why I’ve never understood the ‘Twitter vs Plurk’ mentality, and I honestly think it’s coming from people that haven’t spent much time on Plurk.

Twitter is very straightforward and easy to use. It might take a while to figure out how to REALLY use it effectively, but there isn’t much of a learning curve to its basic use. That’s why Twitter will likely go mainstream, eventually.

Plurk has a much higher learning curve, and is confusing as hell at first. Add in a very quirky layout and timeline format, and odds are Plurk will never appeal to a mass market.

What Plurk DOES have going for it, are IMO two things:

1 – Threaded conversations. Total game-changer, and I would LOVE to see Twitter offer this. I would not be a bit surprised to hear that Loic is working with Twhirl to offer this.

2 – Plurk’s team is EXTREMELY responsive to user requests. Seriously, it’s gotten to the point where we can say ‘man it would be great if Plurk would let us…..’ then 2 days later that feature is added. I’ve seen more listening from The A-Team in 2 weeks than I have from Twitter in 2 years. This is a big reason why so many people are evangelizing Plurk right now.

IMO the two services aren’t competitors at this time. But it’s pretty obvious that Plurk has done its homework and has seen where Twitter is screwing up (lack of community interaction), and is trying to avoid those issues. The next competitor in this space could see how big threaded conversations are, and offer that as well.

Bottom line is that the entire microblogging space benefits from Plurk, and the players that enter this space moving forward will likely give us much stronger offerings.

By: Beth Harte

Beth Harte — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:54:46 +0000

Hi Marc, thanks for including my LinkedIn post in your blog. I really think it doesn’t need to be an either/or for Twitter and Plurk. It really comes down to what someone wants to get out of each and, ultimately, how they use each. It can be hard to keep up with Twitter for conversations without using Summize or FriendFeed. For threaded, engaging conversations, Plurk, for me, is much better. As well, Twitter and Plurk both have their share of technical problems between Whale Fails and Getting New Shoes.

By: Jason Falls

Jason Falls — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:10:52 +0000

You don’t know the unbelievable irony of your prose. I was born where the Hatfields are from (Logan, W.Va.) and raised where the McCoys are from (Pikeville, Ky.). How’s that for irony? Thanks for linking to my post. As for top 30s and 17 thought leaders … I’m honored. Thanks for pointing that out. (Guess I owe Todd a few bucks, huh?)

Good post.