Babelmachine

Because the revolution will not be televised, but blogged

by Joey Alarilla, Philippines

Have you Plurked your life yet?

Sep 29, 2008 01:21

See, Twitter, everyone told you those frequent outages would come back to bite you.

The evidence is just anecdotal, but based on my online interaction, many Filipino bloggers now seem to be more active on Plurk rather than Twitter. I remember the shift starting a few months ago when more and more Twitter users here were getting frustrated by Twitter's downtime. You guessed right--we were twittering about being frustrated with Twitter. :) That's too bad for Twitter; after all, as Ignatius Javellana pointed out, Filipinos really are crazy... Internet crazy, and we can have a big impact on the performance of different sites, as seen in the case of Friendster and Multiply.

Plurk.com

It took me a long time to switch to Plurk--I only started Plurking this September--but now I'm really into it and can say this microblogging tool is way cooler than Twitter. My Plurk addiction is funny considering that the first time I saw it, I was put off by the timeline--and yup it is something you need to get used to if you've been weaned on Twitter or other similar microblogging services.

The great thing about Plurk is that the format really encourages people to comment on your posts. Each Plurk indicates how many comments it has already received. Click on the P`1qplurk and you can read the comments, then post your own, reacting to the original poster or to those who commented. So yup, each Plurk is like a thread in a discussion board.

Plurk is also more visually appealing, particularly to the younger generation. Twitter, despite its recent makeover, which I like by the way, is pretty utilitarian. Plurk is pretty and pretty useful. It offers colorful themes, quirky Plurk creatures, and cool emoticons, so it really combines the appeal of a social network and microblogging tool, living up to its claim of being your social journal.

No discussion of Plurk would be complete without karma. It's a brilliant feature that encourages people to keep on using Plurk, because you earn karma points from different activities--and lose points if you've been inactive or have engaged in activities that result in negative karma, like spamming your fellow Plurkers.

Your karma points will help you unlock different features of the service--for instance, you need to achieve a certain karma level to change your display name, or to use special emoticons. Your goal is to reach Plurk nirvana--I'm still a long way off, but good things come to those who wait, hehe :)

It's interesting to note that the growing popularity of Plurk has given birth to sites such as Plurkmania, which is not related in anyway to Plurk but which monitors Plurkers to give you interesting statistics. As of this writing, the site claims to be monitoring 82,708 Plurkers, of which 23,527 are active.

Plurkmania allows you to view a list of Plurkers arranged in order based on different criteria, such as karma points, location, friends or fans. You may be interested to know that Leo Laporte is currently ranked fifth in terms of number of friends, with 1,755, and second based on number of fans, with 1,995. His karma, however, is 0. Meanwhile, Robert Scoble is ranked third based on number of fans, with 1,666, but also has 0 karma. That's because both aren't active on Plurk--they just have lots of followers.

If you look at the ranking based on karma, you'll find that Asia is well-represented in the Top 20. User cwyuni from Japan is ranked fifth, henzter of Indonesia is at no. 11 (as Budi Putra posted, Indonesia is also really into microblogging), AJ Matela of the Philippines is no. 17, and CGS of Taiwan is no. 18.

Of course, I also checked out the list of Plurkers by location to see the top Plurkers in the Philippines. Ranked based on karma, the top 10 Filipino Plurkers according to Plurkmania are:

1. AJ Matela

I have to add that popular Filipina cosplayer and gamer Alodia is no. 1 in the Philippines when it comes to most number of fans, with 522, and no. 2 for most number of people recruited, with 111. She is ranked 27th in the world for most number of fans, and 25th for most recruited.

By the way, if you're in the Philippines, you can check out phPlurk to update your Plurk timeline using your mobile phone.

If you're not on Plurk yet, what are you waiting for? Join already :)

Happy Plurking!

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Because the revolution will not be televised, but blogged

by Joey Alarilla, Philippines

Have you Plurked your life yet?

About Joey Alarilla

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