My current foray into the Social Media space/phenomenon has been infinitely satisfying primarily due to a seemingly endless array of questions that need answers and what seems to be a daily tasty new software snack tossing itself into the fray. One thing I have noticed is that when people find a new piece of social media ware, they enjoy sharing it with their online communities. It feels a lot like they are pioneers moving into a land and staking claim on it as if it were their own. Each new Social Conquistador exhibits newfound passion and instant evangelism along with a sense of ownership. You also hear them bring the thunder and lightning when the stuff is down. Look at Twitter for instance. You don’t have to take my word for it, just look at all of the complaints about how badly Twitter sucks.

But are they even entitled to act like that? Twitter does not have any revenue model that I can detect. Unless… maybe the revenue model is not transparent. Let’s look at the possibilities:

• Charge subscription fee. That would be an epic fail. Want to see everyone run to Plurk?
• Sell Ads. I would think this would be part of implementation on day 1. You gotta eat and your angels and VC backers will only feed you for so long.
• Sell out to Google, Yahoo or Microsoft

I guess they’re hoping to be bought. It worked for Jaiku!

Plurk is the latest yasmmet. It’s clearly a “competitor” to the popular twitter system. Twitter essentially is an open version of popular instant messaging platforms like MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. Plurk has an opportunity to capture social market share, [Notice that I did not say anything about revenue share as neither currently has a revenue model to speak of] primarily because twitter is horrible about stability.

Plurk has had the benefit of watching twitter flop around like a fish on the beach, but twitter has a big head start. Plurk’s user interface is a lot different. Twitter’s advantage is that most of its users are already longtime instant messenger users and bloggers who understand the technology and have easily adopted and embraced its value proposition. Because Plurk takes a few times to get used to, it puts it at a huge disadvantage in a space where people will give you about 90 seconds before they decide if they want to pursue something– unless they get some of the Twitter elite to convert people.

Plurk’s Approach

• A left to right timeline
• Instant categorization of messages (plurks?): is, loves, hates, wishes, hopes etc.
• Categorization of followings into friends and fans so that you can send messages just to friends or to everyone in your network.
• Exposed analytical fields: “Karma” which help it identify interesting plurkers
• Personal messages that only the plurker can see
• Blog/Comment style plurks so that you can see track a response to a plurk.

Obstacles to overcome

• Proving that in a world where twitter, pownce and jaiku already exist and have user bases, plurk needs to establish its differentiation point
• Getting people from twitter to plurk is going to be a chore, especially the social media evangelists like Chris Brogan, Rob Scoble, Mike Arrington and Jeremiah Owyang.
• Stability and uptime. Plurk already experienced lag when they got a surge of users.

What I like about Plurk

• I like the time line interface.
• I like how the responses can be mapped directly to a plurk. This way I know exactly to what someone is responding.

I suggest you give Plurk a try and a chance.