YASMMeT /yaz’ met/ 1. (acronym) yet another social media messaging tool

Plurk is the latest yasmmet. It’s clearly a “competitor” to the popular twitter system. Twitter essentially is an open version of popular instant messaging platforms like MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. Plurk has an opportunity to capture social market share, [Notice that I did not say anything about revenue share as neither currently has a revenue model to speak of] primarily because twitter is horrible about stability.

Plurk has had the benefit of watching twitter flop around like a fish on the beach, but twitter has a big head start. Plurk’s user interface is a lot different. Twitter’s advantage is that most of its users are already longtime instant messenger users and bloggers who understand the technology and have easily adopted and embraced its value proposition. Because Plurk takes a few times to get used to, it puts it at a huge disadvantage in a space where people will give you about 90 seconds before they decide if they want to pursue something– unless they get some of the Twitter elite to convert people.

Plurk’s Approach

• A left to right timeline
• Instant categorization of messages (plurks?): is, loves, hates, wishes, hopes etc.
• Categorization of followings into friends and fans so that you can send messages just to friends or to everyone in your network.
• Exposed analytical fields: “Karma” which help it identify interesting plurkers
• Personal messages that only the plurker can see
• Blog/Comment style plurks so that you can see track a response to a plurk.

Obstacles to overcome

• Proving that in a world where twitter, pownce and jaiku already exist and have user bases, plurk needs to establish its differentiation point
• Getting people from twitter to plurk is going to be a chore, especially the social media evangelists like Chris Brogan, Rob Scoble, Mike Arrington and Jeremiah Owyang.
• Stability and uptime. Plurk already experienced lag when they got a surge of users.

What I like about Plurk

• I like the time line interface.
• I like how the responses can be mapped directly to a plurk. This way I know exactly to what someone is responding.

I suggest you give Plurk a try and a chance.