Anybody remember the Hatfields and McCoys? Check out this picture and read what you can of the sign:
Civil war conflicts, romantic entanglements, family oriented discord, property disputes, mixed with mountain pride…. Yeeeeehaaaaa. Mabel, git my gun!
Ok..so the guy on the left is Twitter and the the feller on the right is Plurk.. The guy on the left looks like he’s tolerating the guy on the right, doesn’t it? It’s sorta the way I’m seeing whats happening right now between the 2 currently. The golden child versus the upstart. Ali versus Frazier, Firefox versus IE, Kirk versus Khan? Leno versus Letterman.
I know I’m stretching the relationship a bit, if you want to call it a relationship but….really, it’s a situation where eventually you are going to end up in one of two camps but not both… At the least, they are labor intensive, don’t you think? As I have alluded to in a previous post, social networking is hard work, and that includes the likes of micro blogging using the aformentioned Twitter and Plurk.
This topic stems from a LinkedIn question I have currently active in which I asked Do you Twitter? If so why? and if not, how come? For now I’d like to pull from some of the tremendous answers I received from some really really smart people that speak to the duel that is heating up thanks to the Twitter outages of the past few weeks.
Here’s a quick thought maybe Twitter and Plurk could hang together like..
.
Ben and Jerry?
Those scarry 70’s mugshots notwithstanding, we might as meld the two micro-blog sites together and create another entity called Twurk? Plitter? Plutter? Let me digress, before I lose you and share with you some thoughts and links about what others have to say about Twitter and Plurk.
First off, Daniel Schutzsmith provided a great link to a post he wrote called 20 things I learned using Twitter, it’s informative, has a ton of links and makes sense.(nice glasses btw, Daniel)
Next, although this person did not specifically chime in on her love or hate for Twitter, I still liked her post, Melissa Chang, tells me why she likes Twitter, bumps and all…
Beth Harte of OnPath technologies supplied not only some great observations but also 3 great links to 3 great articles that speak to exactly what is good, bad and ugly about Twitter and Plurk. the first is by Mack Collier titled, Getting individuals excited while trying to create a community, I like Mack, and he brings up some great points about Plurk.
Beth’s next suggestion was to read a post by Jason Falls, titled 5 reasons Plurk is better than Twitter and vice versa, who by no coincidence, was recommended to me by Todd Defrens in response to my top 30 social media experts, and 17 thought leaders posts. Jason has some thoughts as well about Plurk you might find interesting.
Lastly, she mentioned a post by Frank Martin called The question of Plurk, which lays It all out pretty succinctly, screen shots and all. I highly recommend it. He seems to be a champion for the Plurk cause, but it’s cool, it’s all good. Ultimately, I think Twitter and Plurk can co-exist just like:
Why not? What sayeth you?
Direct Marketing Observations 
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.
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.
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.
@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.