Plurk, a micro-messaging service similar to Twitter, today added a nice new feature: Real-time conversation search. As you might expect, it allows you to search Plurk’s growing index of data to find out what people are saying about a topic right now. In its post on the matter, Plurk goes into how it thinks this is the next phase of search beyond the traditional search engines, and how social search could revolutionize things. Of course, it fails to mention its number one competitor in the field: Twitter.
Plurk, which launched about a year ago, differentiates itself from Twitter mainly in its look and feel. It emphasizes a horizontal scrolling timeline rather than a vertical one. Plurk also gives users set verbs to use for their updates, such as, “parislemon LOVES real-time search.” That’s all well and good, but Twitter still has the users — a lot more of them. Plurk notes that it’s been growing every day since its launch, and is close to seeing its 1 billionth aggregate responses, but that is nothing compared to the company it won’t mention in its post.
Unfortunately for Plurk, Twitter also just rolled out its on-site search integration to all users last week. Now, the fact of the matter is, if you really want some key data for something happening in real-time, you’re going to go to Twitter to get it, not Plurk. If you have a lot of friends that use Plurk, it may be interesting to use this search to see what they are doing, but Plurk knows the true value of real-time search lies in the masses — that’s why it’s opened up the public data for search queries. And again, it simply cannot match Twitter on that end.
And this real-time search on Plurk has another weakness too. It will only index actual updates right now and not responses (which make up the 1 billion number I threw out there earlier), so that’s a much less sizable index. Plurk has to do this to be able to search working, as it doesn’t have the team or the funds that Twitter currently has.
But kudos to Plurk for getting this done. It is a nice feature to have for any site and will soon be a necessity for these types of micro-messaging services. Track what people are saying about it on Twitter.
Hey TechCrunch, way to cheer on startups! Plurk has a done a fine job, and just because they aren’t Twitter doesn’t mean you have to trash them.
No, but it does mean we have to be realistic. They launched a feature their biggest competitor launched (formally) last week.
I still in favor with Twitter. It is just so easy to use
After the launch of WallPipe.com, definition of easy and social networking will change drastically.
The biggest difference between Twitter and Plurk is that replies are built into each plurk. The horizontal scrolling timeline is just a superficial UI-based difference. If you want a vertical layout, use plurk.com/m.
Not everybody cares if they’re on the biggest microblogging network or not. Regular people usually decide to join a social network based on the people they know on it. Chances are they haven’t heard of the early-adopters that pushed Twitter into the limelight, and are only joining it because of people like Oprah. Or, their friends, of course.
News, or anything else that’s viral, will spread, and will reach Plurk, whether it shows up on Twitter first or not.
Plurk. Yeah I signed up when it was on some site like TechCrunch and I never went back.
I guess real-time search is the future of search. It can pose a serious threat to Google, if Google doesn’t embrace it faster. One of my favorite real-time search engines is http://www.boilingpage.com. It brings the popular pages in real time based on how popular they are in Twitter. It does a good job when compared to other services.
Cool, me like Plurk. Shame no one uses it.
I still like Plurk. I post to all micro-blog type sites through Ping.fm so I have no reason to leave any of them. Plurk does serve it’s purpose for me along with Twitter.
“the true value of real-time search lies in the masses”
This is the key point, twitter has millions of users so their search is much more useful. “Real-time conversation search” is nothing new, forums have had search functions for years.
Wow Plurk is so complicated I had no clue what to do after signing up.
I really hope you are joking.
I like the way Plurk spreads my social graph over a timeline and would like to try its UI with Twitter to see how it scales.
Let us know when Plurk adds the nice new feature of a name I’m not embarrassed to utter out loud.
twitter isn’t mainstream, despite the fact techkrunk is its official pr outlet
I think there’s enough room in this space for both Plurk and Twitter. Twitter’s success does not equate to the demise of all others.
Agreed, Ryan.
Twitter’s main draw is the fact they’ve implemented SMS, but I find that following conversations and topics is a bit of a chore. Everything gets all jumbled up in the feed…
Plurk brings responses together in one place, but they don’t have SMS yet. And, it DOES look more complex than Twitter at first glance, so I think a lot of users are turned off before they really get into it…
I hope Plurk sticks around. They have a good thing going.
Interesting how the article does not even mention twazzup, which now seems to be a reference in twitter real-time searching. http://twazzup.com
Plurk is quite popular in South East Asia. But TechCrunch doesn’t care for such markets (Friendster anyone?)
plurk is confusing… twitter is just straight up simple
Plurk looks too much like a mySpace page, it was completely noisy and extremely hard to read a thread coherently.
I’ll pass.
Hi, cool post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for writing. I will certainly be subscribing to your posts. Keep up great writing
I do agree that Twitter has the big upper hand at the moment… or forever. But you guys are forgetting, it’s only JUST a year old. Twitter is moving into it’s 3rd year and the team over with Twitter is bigger, older etc. Plurk is very much a baby but they’re really working hard and I do think it’s hard to say where it will go.
The downside to Twitter is it’s hard to really have conversations, get to know people. Sure it’s do-able and has been done, I’m sure. But Plurk make it really easy to converse and the average person is more likely to want to converse than just shout into the middle of nowhere about how great they are.
If you actually go on Plurk and use it as a social network, to be social, you’ll find it’s more friendly, and an all round great social network which is growing.
I love plurk, I’ve tried twitter, and it’s all annoying. I meet way more people on plurk than I ever did twitter. I tried twitter for around 5 days, the features are nice, but I wanted a site that wasn’t all about “celebrities.” I’m not going to get a twitter account just so I can add Ellen DeGeneres, if she wants to add me she can get a plurk account. Plurk also has karma, and it may be lacking some features that twitter has, but plurk is new, and every site needs improvement. Go Plurk!
Twitter is great for tracking down the latest events, broadcasting your day to day stories to masses of people, or following the happenings of the latest celebrities.
Plurk is great if you want to hold a conversation about any of the above.
While twitter may have more users and a bigger team working on it, etc, I find that plurk is much easier to use and is better when it comes to actually having conversations and meeting people. Im a user on both twitter and plurk and I have made friends with so many more people on plurk than I have on twitter.
Plurk is constantly improving. Its only been around a year whereas twitter has been around for almost 3 years now. I think that in a year or 2 plurk will be even bigger and better.
Also one of the only reasons twitter is so popular is because of the celebrities on it. Thats why alot of people actually sign up, whereas on plurk they sign up to meet new people and stay in contact with friends.
As long as Plurk doesn’t have an API and as long as they don’t get rid or fix that silly karma system then I don’t think they’ll ever grow.