Blog Post: Plurk!

“Plurk For Life!” or
“I’m Not as Horny IRL. No Really!”

I’ve never been one big on socialization. I have a handful of close friends and I don’t even see all that much of them. I’m sure a lot of you all out there are the same.

When the advent of social media rolled around and Friendster came on the scene, I resisted jumping on the wagon. The idea felt silly to me; having a constant presence on the Internet where EVERYONE could check in with you and bug you anytime they wanted? The avoidance of this was one of the reasons it took me so long to buy a cell phone! Eventually, a friend of mine decided to make an account for me, and I decided to give it a shot.

Since then I’ve tried out a few other social networking sites. Multiply was one of the big ones for me a few years ago, since it seemed like a place where I could post everything I wanted to share with people close to me, and discuss things with them via comments. When interest that site started to become stagnant, I wasn’t really sure what to do anymore on the Internet.

Then I found Plurk.

Almost immediately, I found myself immersed this little community that was buzzing with news from the Internet, links to funny pictures and stories, and personal issues. It’s unique “timeline” interface gave you a look at your friends’ day on the Web and off it. The design seemed to draw you in and make you interested in finding out what else you could do.

Unlike Twitter or Facebook, there wasn’t a whole lot of extras that you never used. Time was spent either telling people what you were up to or reading what others were doing. Sure you could do that on other sites as well, but none of the others made it as easy to reply to those posts and start up actual conversations. It felt like chatting with someone real time rather than replying to random comments on one of your Tweets.

Pretty soon, I was on Plurk almost exclusively. Multiply was dead (except for the occasional request to add another online gadget store), Facebook seemed to be largely a waste of time, and Twitter felt like something celebrities used to brag about themselves. Plurk seemed like home, with a nice handful of people that would share stories I could relate to.

Then Typhoon Ondoy happened and I found out how Plurk could be used for something other than killing time. Who would have thought that the online community here in the Philippines could pull together like that and help so many. People were plurking locations of people in need of rescue in real time, links to articles that would help people trapped in their houses, pages where they could get help, news updates about the affected areas. My home was in one of the affected areas and I was stranded in the office. Those updates were my lifeline as I waited for the water to recede.

During our recent elections, Plurk was again one of the sources I would go to see what was going on. Sure I read the paper every day, watched the news, and visited other websites, but it was interesting to see what the pulse of the online community was as well.

So Plurk has become part of my life now, and is one of the sites that I open every day and revisit constantly. I use it to share posts on my blog, get a quick look at what’s going on, and share news about my hobby and interest. Ok, occasionally I make comments on pictures of scantily clad women that could be construed as juvenile, but what red-blooded male doesn’t?

Despite having accounts with the other social media sites, Plurk is the only one where I’m active every day. I can post anything I need to, and now I can even do it via SMS or through my Gmail account . There is always the Karma system that people from Twitter make such a big deal about, but honestly, it’s not a problem. If you get an extra smilie, great! Does it really affect you if you don’t? if you’re not posting a lot, what does it matter if you’re lacking a few perks? So Plurk is not the biggest social media site on the Web with the most features. So what?

It’s the best.