Musings For A Darkened Room

If you’re like me then you probably jumped on the Plurk bandwagon last week and have spent countless hours wasting the day away in hopes that it will eventually provide you with the same kind of gratification that Twitter gives me when searching for industry news and updates. Sadly the Plurk universe has failed to deliver that same gratification I have come to love with Twitter. Though there are still those few updates here and there that hold some industry relevance; I find that the majority of the information on Plurk is made up of random musings and life updates.

Following some office politics that damn near shutdown much of our Twitter and Plurk use last week, a number of my colleagues and I discussed the differences between the two services and the potential that Plurk holds over Twitter if it takes off for SEO/SEM’s new and old.

Perhaps the most intriguing argument I heard, in favor of Plurk, came from Kristina Sanchez. She had mentioned how many of the updates on Plurk quickly turn into something that simulates a group IM or chat room. She brought up how this would provide a great opportunity for SEO/SEM’s to communicate as a group and share ideas. People from all walks of life, backgrounds, and industries can easily chime in on the topic at hand, and respond to something on your timeline even if the update or subject matter did not originally involve them.

This concept really got me thinking. Imagine if some of the key players in SEO/SEM were as active on Plurk as they are on Twitter. That would open an incredible opportunity for those in the SEO/SEM industry to interact and bounce ideas off of one another. SEO/SEM’s could easily interact and comment on each other’s posts in an environment that often feels like a chat room. And because Plurk groups responses with the original plurk people can follow the updates with ease. Often on Twitter you will see an update and a handful of responses from people, but you don’t always get the whole conversation and a lot of time the update is overlooked completely.

As of right now I still see Twitter has done a great job at providing people with a means of finding out what is going on with the industry and those involved. But Plurk opens the door for a whole world of opportunity. A way for the industry to openly and easily communicate what is going on in the industry and the chance to bounce ideas off one another or ask questions in a real time environment. Twitter provides an opportunity for similar interaction, but not in a community format like Plurk. I still feel Plurk is a huge time waster with a poor UI, but there is clearly a great opportunity that if taken advantage of, could make a huge difference in the SEO/SEM industry.

Following the lead of a friend I decided to give the St. Andrews Face Transformer a whirl. The tool morphs a photo of a person into various nationalities and art styles. I’ve decided to post the best out of my batch for your viewing pleasure. The others were omitted simply because they didn’t look as realistic and you could see the photo effects over the picture.

East Asian Mike

Feminized Mike

Old Man Mike

West Asian Mike

While searching to see what people were saying about Plurk last night I discovered an early addon for Firefox to make the UI of Plurk a little bit easier to follow. The Plurk Firefox Sidebar puts the Plurk timeline into a vertical text format similar to that seen on Twitter. Upon first introduction to the addon I was thoroughly impressed, however this morning I was introduced to the plurk/m page. A mobile format of the Plurk timeline. The Plurk Firefox Sidebar is simply a compressed version of this page displayed in a Firefox sidebar. Disappointment aside I decided I would outline the pros and cons I have found with both the mobile timeline and the Plurk Firefox Sidebar.

Pros:

• The Plurk Firefox Sidebar conveniently puts Plurk and all your updates in a sidebar in Firefox allowing you to easily navigate the web while still seeing what is going on in the world of Plurk.
• Updates are much easier to follow in the vertical timeline and don’t require tons of clicks to see what is going on with your fellow plurkers.
• After a day of hampered productivity yesterday, this tiny addon at least cuts back on some of the clicking tediousness in the regular UI.

Cons:

• Rather than being a standalone app the Plurk Firefox Sidebar is nothing more than the Plurk mobile page compressed; meaning that it is limited to the features available on that page.
• Because the timeline in the mobile page does not seem to automatically refresh you are forced to click on ‘my profile’ to get the latest series of plurks and responses.
• The time in the plurk/m page does not follow the time based on your local area and runs on a 24 hour clock. At 8:44 this morning the mobile timeline read 15:44.
• It’s ugly…One of the most appealing things about Plurk is the visually appealing UI. Since it is the mobile based interface you lose that beauty.
• Because the Plurk Firefox Sidebar is nothing more than a compressed page any links you click on open within that small sidebar, and right click does not work anywhere within this page preventing you from opening links in a new tab, new window, or anywhere else for that matter. You have to copy and past the link into Firefox to properly view the link.

Clearly we are still in dire need of an addon or app that provides a similar functionality to things like Twitterfox and Twhirl, which have shined so brightly with Twitter users. Without them I feel that Plurk is going to lose a lot of it’s users solely based on the fact that they don’t have enough hours in the day to keep up with the busy timeline.

Nearly a week after finding out about Plurk.com, the latest in a series of Twitter clones, I decided I would finally give it a try. The service which defines itself as, “A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, and follow the events of the people that matter to you, in deliciously digestible short messages called plurks.” works in a similar format to Twitter. 140 characters, you follow people, people follow you, yada, yada, yada. But I’m not here to talk about it’s pretty interface or how it works. There are a TON of other blogs that have come up over the last 24 hours about Plurk and how it works. I want to discuss the pros and cons of Plurk and who I think will come out on top in the battle Twitter vs. Plurk battle.

First off I want to point out what Plurk has done right. Plurk has clearly developed their system to handle an an increase in new users. I can’t imagine how many new subscribers the site got today with the huge influx of SEO/SEM professionals, including myself, that quickly swarmed the site earlier this morning. Plurk has also done a great job at creating a visually appealing interface; using various themes, a horizontal scrolling timeline, and a series of karma creatures to grace your profile. Plurk has also introduced karma, an incentive to get users to plurk regularly and invite their friends.

However, Twitter still has a lot to offer over the glitz and glam of Plurk. While Twitter has clearly had it’s share of issues lately you can quickly and easily find out what’s going on with your fellow twits in a clearly defined and easy to navigate text based timeline. The tedious task of checking updates, followed by checking replies, then clicking on messages to scroll through a series of replies is extremely tedious in Plurk, especially as your timeline grows in size.

A colleague of mine had an insane number of updates and responses this afternoon after stepping away from Plurk for a while. How many clicks did it take to get to the end of all the plurks? I don’t even think Mr. Owl has an answer to that one.

Twitter also has a number of desktop apps and browser addons that puts tweeting and receiving updates right at your finger tips. Not to mention the ability to tweet from your cell phone.

Finally Twitter still keeps the micro blogging feel to it. While you clearly see people tweeting back and forth to one another, you never get the feeling you are in a chat room or a group IM. Many times today while using Plurk I watched responses turn into a massive group discussion like you would see in a chat room or IM.

So who do I think will win the war? I think it’s still to early to say. If things stay the course and we don’t start seeing some third party apps and addons that give Plurk a more simplistic Twitterlike timeline and interface, then I think people will slowly resort back to their good friend Twitter. Productivity slowed to a halt today for many people that I followed and plurked with. Staying on top of updates, responses, and plurking is just too tedious and too time consuming of a task. Both myself and a number of colleagues at work had to pry ourselves away from the Plurk timeline just to make sure that we were somewhat productive for the day.

Also, until Plurk implements a text based plurking option many people who regularly micro blog by phone will continue to use Twitter. In fact a few of those I plurked with today said they were still using Twitter solely for the texting ability.

In the meantime those of us who swore by Twitter and are now experimenting with Plurk are forced to hang in limbo and hope something good comes of all of this.

For those of us in the SEO/SEM industry we are definitely having to keep an eye out on both timelines for now since I noticed some people were posting from conferences on one and not the other. We also don’t know what kind of value, if any, Plurks links may provide in the future. We are just now starting to see the value of links and trends on Twiter; how long, if at all, will it take to see these results on this relatively new network. And finally, how many of the key players in the industry are actually going to jump on the Plurk bandwagon? And if they don’t are we really going to spend our time balancing both Twitter and Plurk in our day to day schedules?

I have the feeling this battle is going to drag out for a while and in the meantime those of us using both will just have to suffer through it. Let’s hope that in the meantime I don’t miss anything important!

I’ll let the picture do the talking…

This is a screenshot from the ad that just popped up while listening to my Iris Pandora station. Why is this ironic? Read the Criss Angel Is A Douche Bag and Zotfish Experience.