Warning: comparing Twitter and Plurk is messy. Both are different things to different people, and unless these people agree to disagree the debate will never end.
Here’s my response to The Death of Plurk and the comments on it. This is by no means comprehensive, just lengthy enough to be a standalone post.
Does it matter to you?
Things like API and portability of updates matter to some people, but to others they may not. Several web services have managed to extract Plurk feeds anyway, so at least it’s kind of portable. (Yay?)
And people almost always adopt services because of the peers that surround them. I’ve called several Pinoy tweeple elistist geek haters, and they’ve called Pinoy plurkers the emo, jologs, Friendster crowd. You decide if it’s stereotyping or truth.
I like that Plurk is compassionate, generous, festive, lets you embed images and video, does not require http:// for URLs, and yes, has hardly any elitist geek haters on it. I like that Twitter is cute, flexible, and inspirational. So what features matter to you?
There is crap on both Twitter and Plurk
Now onto the negatives. Both are imperfect and have things that add no value whatsoever, even detract from them. These are what particularly irk me:
- Inane replies, ranging from interjections like “nerd!” to acronyms and smileys.
- @replies directed to a single person without context whatsoever on Twitter.
- Spam (ugh, Be-A-Magpie).
- And of course the phishing scams.
People tend to see nothing but the bad in things, but their overall experience really depends on how they use the services.
Fix it yourself
I’m not very fond of conversations on Twitter, not without threaded replies at least. I avoid doing it even if other people do.
I’m not very fond of updating Plurk every 4 hours just to keep karma from falling. I don’t plurk as much even if other people do.
I don’t see how you can’t improve your Plurk or Twitter experience by avoiding the things that irk you:
- Unfollow people who encourage nonsense. Or elitism. Or hate.
- Use better clients (but to me, Plurk isn’t Plurk without the horizontal timeline).
- Use Plurk or Twitter less often (so they go down less often).
To each his own. Get rid of the herd mentality and do as you please, or get out.