Twitter v. Plurk? Consider me your sidekick

Most of the television shows I’ve seen have presented the classic scenario of a character trying to choose between two lovers. “Who should I choose?” they whine. “Who’s better?”

Then, inevitably, their sidekick-y friend steps in with the perfect solution: make a list! List the things you like about both people, and whichever column is longer, that’s who you go with. (Of course we all know in “real life” that tactic doesn’t work. “Gives great massages” doesn’t carry as much weight as “makes me feel like a million bucks.” Although, some might argue, it depends on the massages.)

Anyways, over the past few weeks I’ve been using both the Plurk and Twitter micro-blogging platforms, and I find myself going back and forth on which one I like better. Most of my friends on Twitter are leery of Plurk and refuse to sign up, or they’ve signed up but don’t actively use it (I’ve heard Plurk called Twitter’s annoying stepchild). Likewise, many of the people on Plurk have almost completely given up on Twitter and use Plurk exclusively. Always one to defend the middle ground, I see the value in both, so I’ve outlined for you the five things I love about Twitter and the five things I love about Plurk.

Five Things I Love About Twitter:

1. It’s clean and simple — Some people like the timeline setup of Plurk, but I find it a little overwhelming and confusing at times, even now that I’ve been using it for a few weeks. Twitter is much cleaner looking, and the simple building up of tweets with the newest on top just makes more sense–spatially–to me.

2. It’s more professional — We’ve all heard of the countless ways in which Twitter has been used for professional purposes, from hiring (@prjobs), to creating new client relationships, to large corporations using it to monitor and send messages to their customer base (@zappos). I’ve yet to hear of Plurk being used for professional purposes, which, to be fair, may simply be a symptom of its young age. But so far, to me, Plurk seems like more of a place for fun, personal connections. An advanced version of the chat rooms of yore, if you will.

3. It lends itself to making real connections — This may be a result of the fact that you can’t search for fellow Plurkers by location, but I think there is also a Twitter culture of moving the chit chat in to real life and turning online relationships in to real relationships, which I haven’t seen on Plurk. And as I’ve said here and here, that’s my favorite part of social media.

4. It’s bigger – There are just more people on Twitter. And in this case, size does matter. More users means a greater potential for making connections that matter, be they personal, professional, or a mix of both.

5. It’s more “grown up” — I’ve heard some chatter, and observed myself, that people tend plurk a little more freely than they tweet, meaning they don’t filter the overly personal/superfluous/mundane things that you just don’t see on Twitter. Call me old school, but boundaries are there for a reason, and some things just aren’t meant to be shared with the world.

Five Things I Love About Plurk:

1. It fosters more frequent and more in-depth conversations — Plurk’s capability for mini chat rooms to pop up in response to specific messages allows for more frequent and more in-depth conversations. On Twitter, I’d estimate that one out of every five of my tweets gets a response. On Plurk, it’s rare that my plurks go without at least one response (and sometimes, more than 100 responses).

2. It’s more carefree – Okay, I realize this directly contradicts my “it’s more grown-up” point about Twitter, but by the same token, sometimes it’s nice to micro-blog without abandon, without worrying about being witty or informative or quirky. Granted, on both platforms, you need to be some of these things some of the time. But Plurk is less demanding. Indeed the most mindless plurks are often the ones that spark the longest response chains.

3. It rewards frequent use — Some may disagree with the concept of “karma,” an arbitrary number that essentially measures how active you are on Plurk, and I do see both sides of the argument. A high karma rating obviously says nothing about the quality of your plurks. That said, you can’t help but want more. And with more karma, you get greater privileges. I know it’s silly, but it’s also a lot of fun. Of course the flip side is that Plurk punishes infrequent use (karma works both ways, kids. Kind of poetic.).

4. It automatically previews direct links to photos and videos — Not a life-shattering feature but as a visual person, it appeals to me.

5. It allows for faster community building — Because you can see anyone’s responses to the people you are following, it’s easier to locate members of your general circle and expand it. And the responses to even your ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’ plurks makes you feel like you are conversing with a community of caring friends, not just a mass of mute followers.

**I must point out that Plurk has yet to make mobile updating available, and so, for the time being, you can only update your Plurk timeline using a web-based service. In my mind, this is a major disadvantage for Plurk, since life doesn’t always happen in front of a computer.

For now, I’ll stick to splitting my time between Twitter and Plurk. Ultimately, they fulfill different needs. And that’s the wonderful thing about social media. You can engage as much or as little as you please, depending on where YOU want to take it.