Plurk is taking awesome to a new level

This is definitely a review week over here at GregWolejko.com. After my reviews of Flickchart and Acrobat.com now it is time for Plurk. 

From their FAQ page: Plurk is “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.”

That’s just a little boring description. Let me explain what Plurk really is. First, the word:

plurk: Function: noun. Etymology: English from play and work, coined by TD Schneider; 
A Glossary for Molecular Information Theory and the Delila System

 And now, the app: Plurk is basically another Twitter like application, a microblogging mixed with IM. But saying that it is like Twitter doesn’t do just to the idea behind Plurk. Just like Pownce is a Twitter on steroids and offers more than just text functions, Plurks adds awesomeness to the whole microblogging experience.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the rest of this review will go as usual with me answering two major questions:

What rocks?

• idea - as mentioned before: Twitter-like but totally different. Big plus for creating something innovative in a field where it seemed nothing new will happen. 
• timeline - Plurk visualizes the timeline, displaying floating bubbles of yours and your friends’ plurks in a lovely manner. This makes it so fun to use. And if something is fun to use then I’m in and writing about it.
• karma - a new idea: all kinds of your activities on Plurk (plurking, replying, inviting people) adds up to your karma. The more the better. And it is a great idea to motivate users to actually be active on your site. Points for ingenuity.

What sucks?

• scrolling - maybe I am picky but scrolling kinda works funny there: you have a long horizontal scroll for your timeline but you have to remember that if you want to scroll vertically you need to grab a screen below the timeline (maybe it is just a behavior of a touchpad, but still)
• lack of API - no API means no cool desktop clients and that sucks as it encapsulates this awesome idea inside just a web browser.

Conclusion:

I love the design. Not site’s design (with all honesty it’s not half bad) but the information design. Fantastic way of representing timeline (though a reversed direction is a bit intuitive at first), great model of replying to other’s plurks all this sums up to a fantastic user experience. Bottom line is that Plurk is fun to use and this makes it breakthrough app. Site is not another Twitter clone it brings the whole experience to another level.

You can see it by my experience. I wasn’t interested in what Plurk has to offer but my friends from Twitter that were testing Plurk started flooding me with invites. I’ve decided to give it a try and after few minutes I was sold. This is what you call fantastic UX. 

I definitely can recommend Plurk to anyone interested in  microblogging and feels bit fed up with recent Twitter events. But can Plurk be a equal competition for Twitter? Well, this is a question for another post

If you feel convinced about Plurk then go ahead and follow me there.