Twitter Versus Plurk: The UI Advantage
When I first reviewed Plurk for ReadWriteWeb, I had only been using this new lifestreaming service for a little while. After using it for much longer, I've realized that there is really just one major difference between Twitter and Plurk - but it's that one difference that makes Plurk so much better.
This is a guest post by Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites.
If you think about the basic functionality, all micro-blogging sites offer more or less the same. You can create an account, add some friends, and then message back and forth (privately and publicly) and share stuff with each other. What Plurk does differently is the user interface and the effect of this change reverberates throughout the site. Here are the major UI changes and their impact.
1. The Timeline View
Not everyone has been happy with it but changing the way the information is displayed was a bold move, and ultimately the right one. The new layout performs exactly as expected. The timeline scrolls left to right, with the most recent data at the left. You can control the timeline using the trackpad or the arrow keys. Since the messages are arranged in chronological order, and because sometimes people send messages at the same time, this view also let's you easily read a large number of messages at the same time.
2. The One Line Messages
Just like the timeline view, the one line message layout is such a simple idea that at first it's very easy to not even notice it. But take a second and you'll notice that Plurk displays the avatar, a qualifier, a message snippet, and the number of replies for the message, all on one line. Again this allows you to easily read or ignore a large number of messages based on who posted the message, what qualifier the user used, and how many responses the message already has. This way you can skip between messages as you deem important, rather than looking at conversations from a top-down view (like on Twitter).
3. The Red Flag Replies and Update Boxes
The best part of Plurk is the constant chatter. Once you log in and add some friends, it's hard to get away. The reason for this is the way Plurk announces new activity to you. Unlike other services where you have to go looking for replies, on Plurk, every reply sticks out like a red flag. Every time someone posts a message you can see how many people replied to it, and with one click, read all the replies like a threaded conversation.
First, because the replies clearly stick out, you are bound to check them fairly quickly after they are posted, and second, because every Plurk message that is posted gets it's own conversation page (where all the replies are threaded and easy to follow), more people are likely to reply to a message and start conversations. Finally, because your Plurk page isn't static, and tells you every time you have new replies or your friends post a new message, you are more likely to check out what other people are up to (although at times of high activity this can feel like a nag screen).
4. The Inline Attachments
This one is a twofer. It is a user interface improvement but it's also a feature. Unlike Twitter where you can just post link to media, on Plurk, whenever you link to a picture, song, or video, the media is immediately visible/playable from within the message and you can double click it to get to the original source.
5. And Everything Else
Finally, another great Plurk feature that most people forget about is that the design offers so much information but is never overwhelming or confusing to navigate. All the chatting and microblogging activity takes place above the scroll to encourage maximum engagement, while everything else (like user info and activity stats, friends and fans, and mobile links) is below the scroll and out of the way (I sometimes forget all that stuff is there).
Conclusion
That said, the problem Plurk faces is the exact same problem that Mixx faces. Though the site has a better service, they can't match the same number of registrations or activity as market leaders simply because of the first mover advantage. People either find it too complicated (it's not) or are too lazy (they definitely are) to transfer their entire network over to a new service. The problem is that no one wants to move to a new site unless their entire network of friends moves too. This means unless there is a mass migration, a majority of the people (though they are definitely testing it) won't stay with the service in the long term.
In fact, even though I really like Plurk, I don't use it as frequently as Twitter simply because all my friends are using Twitter more frequently.
You can friend me on Twitter and Friendfeed.
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Isn't that topic dead yet?
Posted by: ChaCha Fance
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July 30, 2008 10:02 PM
Plurk Rocks! Twitter is so impersonal.
DUDE! How the hell is your expert-cred gonna be a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. HAHAHAHA!!!!
I guess that makes my 16yr old sister a Myspace consultant.
It isn't so much first mover as the massive reach/distribution of Twitter. That would be parallel to saying Facebook shouldn't have gotten the Myspace and Friendster users to convert.
I find the Plurk UI counter-intuitive actually... for me, anyway. I'm always so lost when I log in that I just don't want to bother anymore... unless all my friends jumped shipped.
Another point is that it is evolving faster. in plurk you now got customization, muting, search, and very soon the ability of very specific sorting in a way that is a reminder of Pownce. pownce best feature is the sorting you can do. too bad that pownce is now horrible and more than not will not work right.
Plurk is Jaiku reloaded. a different take on what jaiku is. it should not be compared to Twitter but to jaiku.
Thanks for this good article about Plurk. I went to the site and opened an account. What seems strange about the interface is that the timeline runs in the opposite direction from every other timeline graph in the world.
@Alan - I totally agree that the timeline runs in the wrong direction (for westerners). Maybe that should be a preference or it should be clearer on the timeline.
I don't think that Plurk has that much of an advantage over twitter in terms of design, if anything twitter's simplicity works in its favor - Hick's Law(ish).
I'm a BIG BIG fan of Plurk's UI and the ways in which it takes the DESKTOP microblogging UI to a new level. It's clean and easy to use, yet not overwhelming. And its Ajax calls are fast enough to support IM-like chatting.
Unfortunately, many, if not most of the people that use Twitter DON'T use it through a browser.
Any microblogging site that wants to take on Twitter has to make it at least as easy to post. Twitter has the advantage of a developer community that loves making sidebars and widget-y desktop things. Plus they have a dead-simple to remember SMS number: 40404.
Also left out of the discussion is that Plurk requires a commitment. Twitter is one-to-many. You can post and go. Plurk's threaded messaging requires you to log-in to take place in the discussion.
And finally, there's the network effect: good luck getting your friends to switch networks en masse, especially to one that's SO radically different that some folks won't get it.
~I am not saying this because I am in Top Plurkers Section ~
I like plurk just because it's more conversational, almost no spammers and its faster then twitter at least for now. Plurk also provides more tools then twitter.
Plurk and Twitter are both powerful forms of micro-blogging, or lifestyle updating. The key is to use both in the manner for which they are best effective. Plurk is very personal and more interactive. Therefore, I am a lot more personal and interactive on Plurk. Twitter is more formal and "snobbish". So I am more professional and businesslike. Just my thoughts.
I think what works better for you really depends on how you're using the particular app. I use Twitter to send alerts to the people who's following me and to keep tabs on what the people I'm following are doing. I rarely post from the website and prefer to use a third-party app like Twhirl and BeTwittered to monitor and send tweets and replies. Both of these apps run in the background and it's something that I glance at every so often while I'm working.
Plurk seems to be more based on conversation so it's not something that can just monitor while doing other things (or at least I haven't figured out how), which is one reason why it's hard for me to get into it. You actually have to, like someone else said, make a commitment to engage with it.
Perhaps the more I mess around with it the more I'll get into it, but for now, Twitter wins with me because of the ease of use.
I am in complete agreement with Nicolette Tallmadge for all the reasons she mentions (Twhirl was was got me hooked on Twitter in the first place because of the ability to let it run in the background.)
Another big minus to Plurk is that I get to see comments from people I am not following/friends with, etc. So that all too often I am learning the breakfast menus of perfect strangers. A Plurk thread started by a friend can easily have 90% of the follow-ups from people I've never heard of.
Twitter only shows me @ messages aimed at other people I'm following. Which makes it a lot more relevant.
Thanks for a great post.I have been using Twitter and like it.Perhaps I should get into Plurk as well.The problem is that there are so many sites social sites these days and you must choose a few that you use, you cannot participate in all of them.
Still a relatively new user, but I like Plurk more and more because of the social interaction threads within posts among users, which is more attuned to Livejournal's or Facebook's. Hence friendlier.
Besides, the FailWhale jumped the shark.
There's also the Plurk CSS and themes I can customize to make to my page more personal. And the "karma" concept I originally thought was foofy or superfluous, but it's actually more of a deterrent to spammers and content whores than I thought, for the better.
I joined Hellotxt (Ping's still in beta-invites only), which cross-posts my microblogging posts everywhere for me, so I can still honor Twitter/Identi.ca etc.
And as an aside I never liked Friendfeed. It's too cold and clinical and lonely over there.
Plurk is fine and all, but it really needs to step it up on it's cross platform functionality. I'd say that's a reason twitter's stayed on top. Pownce has more features as well, but hasn't been as widely adopted.
Posted by: michaellambie.org
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July 31, 2008 12:56 PM
This article inspired me to take a look and join :)
I must say UI is simply great with tonnes of features stuffed to take micro blogging to a next level.
Twitter definitely lags such features but there are some key points that stole the lime light - simple UI [no looking here and there, do your stuff and close it up], it's a icebreaker, hell lot of users and i don't see count reducing, tonnes of support from different vendors ...
It'd be hell lot of efforts, time, money to kick back Twitter, as simple as kicking Google out of search, gosh !!!
I still can't consider Plurk and Twitter comparable products for the reasons I highlighted here. Granted, Mu, you took a different approach (as related to the user interface). But as Rizzn pointed out on Mashable, the people who are using Plurk are *incredibly engaged* more so than any other type of site that has been in its infancy (at least from my observations).
I still use both, but when I want to share quick information, it's typically Twitter that I'll do that on. Plurk is still the site where I establish and build up strong relationships. It just works better imo. The big challenge is picking one over the other. To me, they're two different products entirely except for the 140 character limit.
Twitter is better..simple and clean.
Posted by: thejeshgn.com
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July 31, 2008 8:52 PM
The UI advantage you mention that plurk offers on the site are of not much use to most twitter users as they use a mobile or PC client. Now as far as shifting the network to new service is concerned, why should one do it when the new service isn't solving any problem
Nice post.
Yeah, I was saying it when Plurk had it's explosion. -- The UI features could be used on top of Twitter ... all the messages and users could easily be Twitter data.
Instead of going it alone, they should have just built it as a new UI on top of the Twitter API. Plurk could have then had a chance to become everyone's favorite twitter UI.
Excellent review that was clear and concise. While I use Plurk more frequently now than I do Twitter, I still like to post to Twitter. I use hellotxt.com for messages and ping.fm for messages w/other media.
At hello.txt, I can post to Twitter, Bebo, Jaiku, Pownce and Plurk. There are other networking sites that you can post to from hellotxt.com.
I also like the easy manner in which I can enter a URL and have it link to text in my Plurk.
Thanks for the excellent post.