www.plurk.com and www.twitter.com have a lot of similarites and a lot of differences. Similarities can be summed up as:
1. Both are Social Media Sites
2. Both provide you with a method to do "mini-blogging." IE - to share a short message about what's going on in your day.
3. Both have systems for finding and making "friends."
4. Both have systems for sending a direct or private message to an individual "friend."
Twitter has been around longer and is the one that I'm betting most of my readers are more familiar with. After all, even the stars are using twitter these days! I've been on twitter for awhile now, and I know many people who've found it very useful. I currently have 1,424 followers and I follow 1,377.
Now I know several people who've made sales that they can directly relate back to advertising on Twitter. I can say that I've gotten views on items, but no sales. I've built a few relationships, but with that many people feeding in to my twitter, building a relationship is hard!
When I first heard about Plurk my thought was, "Well isn't that just like Twitter? It's not like Twitter's really been that helpful for me..." I ignored the first few inventations I got to it, but then I noticed something. I was getting a LOT of invites for Plurk! So one day when I had some extra time I signed up...and fell in love pretty quickly.
Like Twitter, you post up short thoughts on Plurk. However, instead of having to go to your "replies" section to see if you've gotten any responses, Plurk creates a "thread" with each post that's put up so you and anyone else who's interested can follow the responses! This makes it much easier to form a connection and have a conversation with the people reading your plurks.
Plurk also updates you immediately when one of your friends puts up a new post or when someone replies. With Twitter you have to find and download a seperate program to get those features, but Plurk does it right there in your browser. I can't run the Twitter programs because I'm on a laptop and it slows down my processing speeds too much, but I can keep up with Plurk!
Now here's the kicker - I've only been on Plurk for a month or two (vs 8-10 months with Twitter) - and I've already had several sales as a result! Since all your replies to a post are right there and easy to view it's really easy to talk to potential customers. I've had several direct sales where I've posted about a new item and it's sold, and I've negotiated several custom orders via plurk.
Does that mean Twitter's all bad? Certainly not! Like I said, I know people who make sales from it! Plurk allows me to send all my posts over to Twitter so I still use my twitter. I check for responses through out the day and I still talk to people over there. I just vastly prefer Plurk!
If your interested in signing up for an account on plurk just follow this link: http://www.plurk.com/roseworksjewelry/invite
