This is plurk.  A great new concept, based upon a fairly new concept, based upon an old concept.  First there was a blog, than there was a microblog made popular by Twitter, now there is Plurk.  In my opinion plurk is a natural progression of Twitter.  Twitter allows you to have your one sentence blog, and you can have followers.  But beyond that there isn’t many capabilities as a tool to keep you wanting to come back and check on comments from others or really get engaged with it.

That’s where Plurk comes in.  It’s Twitter, but with features that will keep you coming back, and keep your friends coming back.

Here is an example of a plurk page.  The top part(blue) is the time line.  This is where all your plurks(or messages) are stored.  The neat thing here is that the messages scroll horizontally instead of vertically.  It literally is a timeline.  You can see when you posted, and the progress of your monologue.  It’s an interesting twist to journaling.

And features!  As I was saying earlier, Plurk has plenty of features that make this a superior tool.  The keyword is integration.  Whereas Twitter has little to no integration, Plurk is bursting at the seams with it.

Here are a few:

A guide to get you started.

EMOTICONS!

Karma - I’m going to discuss this more thoroughly in a future article.  But just remember this with Karma, “Do good things, and good things happen”.  You can earn Karma by participating in the plurk social community and posting Plurks.  Another feature to get you more involved with Plurk over Twitter.

Friends - Similar to all Social Networking sites.  But why would you want to join a site unless you can make friends?

Fans - similar to friends, but they only follow your timeline.

Widgets - Problem with Twitter is they have no way to share your tweets with anyone.  People have to go to the Twitter page to view them.  People have now created plugins and whatnot, but they are third party, just making more hassle.  With Plurk, they have eliminated that problem with custom Widgets!  You can go in and add html, pics and graphics to share your plurks with the world.

And most importantly - CUSTOMIZATION!  That’s why you are here right?  To learn about plurk themes and how to customize them to your liking?  Well, you can do all of that in the Customize Profile Dashboard.  Change the color and style of your Plurker’s Lair with CSS, and some of Plurk’s tools.  Also, get you a Karma creature(of course once you’ve earned enough Karma Credits).

More features include:

Alerts
Interesting Plurkers
Join Cliques (Groups)
Social Integration - Youtube, Flickr, links and more can be added right to the timeline
Get more features with the more Karma points you get
You can edit your messages
Different messages - not just “this is what I’m doing right now” message

To sum things up Plurk is a social journal that chronicles your life.  If you are into blogging, twittering, or have joined any social networks I highly recommend Plurk.  If you need help getting started or want to use some of our templates, stick around because there’s lots more to come.