Over the past month, I have been using a Twitter like services called Plurk. The major difference between this and Twitter is the way they display the messages, or as they call them, Plurks. Where Twitter shows Tweets in a list form, Plurks are shown in a timeline format. At first, I found the site to be a little slow and not as good, but as soon as more of my friends jumped on the bandwagon, the ball started rolling.

One of the things that makes Plurk different from Twitter is the conversations. Replies are threaded with a Plurk, as shown by clicking on the Plurk to drop down the replies people have said. This is better than the way Twitter does it because it don’t show it as a new message, which is a little annoying at times seeing replies to other people in your tweet stream. It just doesn’t make sense.I really like the replies because it makes the site seem a lot more active and fast paced, more like IM or IRC.

Plurk is very smooth, all thanks to AJAX. There is no refreshing of pages, which is a godsend, especially when there is a new Plurk or reply every second. You would be refreshing all the time otherwise. It is also good about notifying you when there are new messages and replies, and marking them as read. I like being able to know what I have and have not read. It makes it so much easier to catch up when I have been away sleeping or at school or away from keyboard.

One of the perks with Plurk is a Karma system. This gives users a way to how they compare with other users on the site. This is much better than judging by who has the most friends or followers, as sometimes its impossible to beat web celebs with that. The karma system is more fair and is based more on messages that friends, although it still is a factor. Although having a ratings system as such does have its downsides, such as people overplurking, aka spamming. This isn’t a huge issue but it could be in the future. I hope they have ways to manage this when it does happen.

I have not had any issues with Plurk and I think it is a great service, better than Twitter in my books. Although this wouldn’t be the case if it wasn’t for my friends and the internet people that friend me and make the Plurking experience more enjoyable and real. If you don’t already have a Plurk account, make one by using my link here. By doing so will note me for your referral and we will automatically be added on each others friends lists. Plurk on my friends!

 Veronica Belmont recently wrote an article on her blog about how she doesn’t like Tumblr. The reason behind it was because of people aggregating their feeds into it. I don’t think that it is enough for you to not like a service because there is a lot more too it than that. I personally think that its the worst feature that Tumblr has but I get over it because very few of the people I follow do import their feeds into it.

But she does have very good points about people aggregating their feeds into sites like Tumblr. I think people shouldn’t do it, especially on Tumblr. Why you may ask, well it is because I don’t want to see your links and such on your tumblelog. If I want to see what you are twittering about, I will follow you on that and/or subscribe to your feed there. Same applies to your pictures, if I wanted to see your pictures, I would be following you on Flickr and seeing you pictures along with everyone elses pictures. This is also the case for all the other services that you are part of.

If I want to see various content, I want to see them together as a group. All my friends tweets, photos, blog post ect. on their own. I don’t want to see the content mixed up. I am fine with having everyone pictures together in a single feed for me to go through. The problem also is that if you do that, I am going to end u seeing your content twice. I don’t want to see it twice because it wastes time. In saying that, if you have something that everyone must see, for example, a very nice shot you took and uploaded to Flickr, that would be acceptable, I just don’t want your whole feed with all your pictures on your tumblelog, or any other service.

If you do that, people are going to get annoyed and frustrated and stop following you and unsubscribe from the feed, so in the long run, you lose. This is a greater loss if you actually use the service for what it was intended, the imported content clutters your actual content and you end up with a mess that few people are following because of it. In saying that, I am sure it is acceptable for you to have a place to import your feeds in one place to give to a contact, or contacts, that don’t follow you everywhere and would still like to see what you do online.

It would be good if there was a service that could deliver that and that only, aggregating content, not creating it. I am sure there are services that do that an I don’t think Tumblr is one of them, even though it is possible. I think it was a mistake to ever put that feature in to be honest. Anyway, I think it is unfair also for someone to dislike a service for something a feature on the site, one that the minority would use. Tumblr is a wonderful service and is definitely my favorite one of 2007. Please keep your feeds of my Tumblr

As you may have realized, my blog has been down for about a fortnight, on and off. Well I promise (well Peppery promises) that it won’t happen again anytime soon. Now I shall return to posting on a regular  schedule knowing that the blog will be up for me to do so. I am going to try for a daily post because I have the time to do that now that I am on holiday.

Well now exams are over and from Monday at 10:30am, I am officially on holiday, although my body and mind have been on holiday for a good two and a half weeks already. I managed to struggle though my exams without studying and we can see the results (or lack of) from this exercise. Lets hope I managed to fluke everything again like last year.

At the end of March this year, I left a service called Twitter. Today marks the day I return to the service because a lot of my online contacts use it and I have been following them for some time now. I feel it is time for me to participate with them on the website so tweeting commences on my original Twitter profile. I hope that this time I can stay a little longer, just long enough for the service to capture me in its net and not let me leave. We will see how this turns out.