The threading is really nice, but for some people the simplicity of twitter is much more appealing. - Rob Diana

Look at what's happening on identi.ca. The race for the most amount of followers. Same difference if you ask me. - Bwana McCall

I haven't found Plurk to be usable. The sideways scrolling, the constant "You have an update!" notifications: it gives me a headache. - Mark Trapp

i tried plurk -- a little too bubblegum for me to be honest. plus the karma points make me feel like i'm in some competition. - Cee Bee

I enjoy the threaded conversations while I'm there. Really really easy to have conversations. It took me a week to get used to the timeline, but when I did, I could see the value. It's a totally different animal from Twitter. (literally) - Bwana McCall

I haven't used Plurk THAT much, but it seems to be carving out its niche as a chatty, lightweight application. There's clearly a group of people who really like it. It won't appeal to everyone, but I think it will find its own audience, probably at the expense of Twitter or FriendFeed. Shrug. If nothing else, it shows that people are interested in conversations, just as they have been for the past 20+ years. I will probably be an occasional user at best, but it probably wasn't designed for me either. - Mark Dykeman

I try not to compare it to Twitter and judge it on its own merits. I just feel overwhelmed having to collapse every single thread just to see if I might be interested in the convo. And having to collapse every thread to see if anyone responded to time. I can't even fathom how a business might use it as some folks have suggested. - Jennifer Leggio

Regarding Jennifer's question, I sincerely believe people who say they like Plurk. Of course there are some who simply must be right as that is true with any situation, but the people I've observed and talked to on Plurk use it for meaningful purposes. You hate it and it seems like you hate to see people like it. :) It's not a black and white type thing though. The term "reality" doesn't have a factual meaning here because liking Plurk is purely opinionated. - Bwana McCall

I disagree that Plurk can be used for business purposes. In my opinion, it's a social, fun tool to be used between friends and family. - Bwana McCall

Regarding following threads, the technique I found to work was selective reading. To "catch up" on Plurk, you will drive yourself nuts if you try to read every thread. What I do is skim the conversations and find the 2 or 3 I'm interested in and I read those. With the new "mute" functionality, I have a rule that if a unwanted conversation shows up 3 or more times when I catch up, I mute the thread. This workflow allows me to catch up on hundreds of updates in minutes. - Bwana McCall

Even with that technique, many don't want to bother with all that. That's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with disliking it. Plurk can be a huge timesink even with efficient techniques. That was a big reason why I cut back my usage. I would spend hours talking to people. No time for that :) - Bwana McCall

@Bwana "You hate it and it seems like you hate to see people like it." That was an incorrect, unfounded and unnecessary judgment. Just trying to understand it as all. I don't have that much free time to sit around and play with all of these tools so I ask questions to get other people's insights. I expressed an opinion but that does not mean I hate the other people like it. I don't understand why other people like it. Big difference. That comment kind of discredited your whole statement. - Jennifer Leggio

It was a joke Jennifer, hence the smiley. Text sucks for wit. - Bwana McCall

There are lots of things I dislike -- baseball, pork, country music. I may ask questions to better understand the appeal and in doing so I might express my own opinion, but that doesn't mean it bothers me if other people like it. I just may never agree and may always look at them with a raised eyebrow. ;-) - Jennifer Leggio

@Bwana - Yeah, hard to tell if comments with a smiley online are jokes or passive aggression. lol. In that case ignore my statement. But I still dislike Plurk, baseball, pork and country music. ;-) - Jennifer Leggio

Plurk took away the ability to delete an account about 2 weeks ago... I wonder why that is...? I'm guessing Account Retention due to an increased frequency of deletions... sad though that they would prevent you from deleting your account. They don't answer support inquiries either. Fail across the board. Oh, I should mention that I exploited the site to add thousands of friends at once and it broke the functionality of the site for many of the people on my friends list. They still haven't fixed those issues - Brandon

I'd like to know how in the world people would use Plurk in their business. A far stretch would be to gather feedback from their products (as businesses do on Twitter, etc). Other than that... I can't see it at all. - Bwana McCall

I find the headless graphic disturbing. - Angel Aviles-McClinton

@Bwana Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out. I've seen a lot of claims made but nothing in action. If I hear of anything concrete I will let you know. - Jennifer Leggio

@Brandon I'm actually interviewing the Plurk folks sometime in the next week so I'll ask them about the account deletion and support. - Jennifer Leggio

Angel - so did I at first. You can change that graphic, but it's not obvious - Bwana McCall

I think the Karma thing bugs me the most. The timeline, is kitschy and I think needlessly complexifies the UI, but ultimately is just a personal preference. I could see businesses using it the same way they use twitter, but with greater potential for starting a dialogue since it is trivial for anyone to track the full conversation. - felix

@Jennifer That sounds great, thanks. - Brandon

have a plurk but check it minimally - never really had what i was looking for, but neither did jaiku or pownce - think identi.ca will be the same way - am liking swurl so far though but friendfeed is the real keeper... - mike "glemak" dunn

@Mike Agree. I think that FF has the most sustainability of them all. I wish I could say that about Twitter as I do <3 it... but not looking so good. - Jennifer Leggio

@Jennifer agreed, i ♥ twitter too but things aren't looking that well anymore. FF ftw. - Brandon

@mediaphyter, Plurk is as good as the friends you follow... yet I can't condone one replacing the other. - Czar Derek Peterman

Jennifer I can tell you that the people using Plurk are there because we honestly love it. I was on there last night laughing my head off till I was crying at some of the stuff other people were plurking about. It was literally roll in the floor hilarious! I can understand why some people don't like Plurk, but I can also understand EXACTLY why those of us that spend time on Plurk, love it. - Mack Collier

@Mack But the hilarity of the content has nothing to do with the platform, it's the people right? Those people could be anywhere. I have similar experiences with Twitter and FriendFeed and even Pownce before I retired from there. Saying "but it's funny" doesn't defend the platform. It just says you happen to have a good network or find good conversations. That can be done anywhere. - Jennifer Leggio

I'm over at Plurk trying to give it another chance. It's making me feel like I have ADD. Plus there's no way I will remember all of the threads I've posted on. Maybe I need to carry around a Plurk notepad and write them down? :-/ - Jennifer Leggio

Yeah, but people also tout the virtues of MySpace. - Evo Terra via twhirl

Plurk does seem to be a love/hate app - Sarah Perez

Why do people feel that Plurk has to be useful for business? I wasn't into social media at the time but did this type of discussion happen when MySpace came out? Unless you have a band, not too many business uses for that either but it's still very popular. - Vaughn

@Vaughn I don't think anyone's saying it has to be useful for business - but a lot of people are claiming that it is. So I want to understand how (and am currently having that convo with Plurk itself via email). As for MySpace, as much as I've outgrown that myself, a lot of consumer-oriented companies DO still use it for branding and promotion. It's a lot of the B2B companies that it has scared off. - Jennifer Leggio

@Jennifer Leggio That makes sense. Sometimes I feel that Plurk is the square peg and people are trying to force it into the round hole. - Vaughn

Yeah, I get it as a driver for the source code, which is good in terms of distributed microblogging. I'd just like to see something original versus a copycat launched before it's fully feature-ized. - Jennifer Leggio

Hasn't been working well for me and many others. Had to post through ping.fm earlier. But yes it's still very new. - Devin Anderson via fftogo

Bwana - Maybe it's my enterprise tech snobbery but I always find it baffling how in the consumer world it's OK to put out something half-baked and it can be adopted but you can nary pull that off when servicing businesses. - Jennifer Leggio

I wouldn't even consider identi.ca part of the consumer world. It's in the early early early early adopter phase. It's going to be half baked, half done, half featured, and broken. - Bwana McCall

Well, I'm not one to jump on a bandwagon so I'll watch from afar and see what comes of it, mostly in seeing what companies do with the code when there are more available features. Half the people around here can barely sit down since they are too busy running from one shiny object to another. - Jennifer Leggio

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, I don't have a problem trying these services, analyzing them, reporting my findings, then moving on. It's a hobby of mine. I love testing software. - Bwana McCall

check out what @corvida wrote about it http://shegeeks.net/ - expect all those features and more... they're doing pretty well for day 2. :) - Lucretia Pruitt