Gettin' on the Plurk Bandwagon... not that I ever got off.

I am going to take a page from the book of my dear Plurkie friend Pegasus Soaps, aka Michelle and tell you all a little bit about why *I* prefer Plurk over Twitter.

First let me say a few good things about Twitter. Twitter is totally cool! You can send a 140 character thought out into the universe without a care of whether it's seen or not. You can browse random tweets from friends, neighbors and celebrities. You can keep up on The World in a minute-by-minute fashion. It's honestly an awesome and nifty creation. I have a Twitter account, and I tend to keep it to business, tweeting about my own creations, the creations of my friends & business associates, and passing along relevant articles and links about things of use to crafters, artists and online business people. I don't tweet often (should more, I'm sure) but I keep up with a few people and am always looking for more interesting folks to follow. Feel free to follow me if you'd like. I'll probably follow back!

The problem is, Twitter is like shouting across the room at a crowded party or bar, hoping that someone hears you. I can see the use of that from time to time, but I'm really a conversation person. At parties you'll almost always find me deep in conversation with a group of folks, and at a bar I'm generally going there for the conversation of the people who come with me. Hollering a remark across the room is fun, can be useful, might work - but on the whole I like a face or a name to hear me, laugh, frown, comment on it, have a similar story to share. That's the way I roll, folks... so, that's why Plurk gets my daily attention and Twitter gets a look every week or so.

The reason they're different is threading. On Twitter you just post your comments and there's no way to follow a conversation between people - no easy way, that is. Someone can direct a comment to you, and you can direct one back - but the outside observer will have to click all over the place to try to figure out what the context is. I like context. With Plurk, one comment can have replies back and forth, threaded to that originating comment. I -like- that. On Twitter I don't say anything I don't want the world to see at a glance. On Plurk my timeline is private, not because I'm under any illusion that I'm hiding it from someone who really wants to see it, but just to keep a bit of a lid on and make everyone feel a little more comfortable being loose and chatty in my Plurks. It works. I have a fantastic bunch of friends - some are onery miscreants who like to tease and hijack my threads... all are good friends, some In Real Life, some just online. Most are crafty artists who like to create and who support me by commenting on my art, sharing my site with others, and reading my blog.

I don't have those kinds of friends on Twitter. I don't miss it there - that's not what Twitter is about. I don't want Twitter to be more like Plurk, not at all. I just need Plurk around to really round out my online experience.