rare pattern thoughts in a blog

I confess: I like Plurk. I like the timeline. I like the serenity of the GUI. I'm not sure how it would work with a lot of messages, but let's face it, Twitter's river of tweets can seem like a laundry list of random thoughts.

But there are two things that make Twitter better, despite its persistent performance problems and downtimes:

1 - Twitter has apps. I joined Twitter early last year, but I don't think I would be Twittering at all anymore if I didn't have Twitterific or something similar. I don't like to have to live on a website for high-traffic content. Now if Plurk had a nice desktop app -- preferably not requiring the clunky Adobe Air....

2 - Twitter is where the people are. Plurk has a nice GUI, but will people come? I've discovered some new people, but I don't know many people on Plurk. Cool GUIs don't quite make up for the lack of "social" in a social network app.

Still, I think Plurk is onto something. It's distinct. There are several web apps that could be called "Twitter alternatives" but they're pretty much the same, or very similar.

About the author

Laura Scott is a web designer and developer.