Kieran Hawe writes... Is there a day that goes by where some new micro-blogging “Twitter Killer” isn’t launched? Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk, FriendFeed…the list goes on and on. Each comes out the gate promising to be the next big thing and outside of a few earlier adopters they usually fizzle into social media purgatory - some good user numbers but nothing to get that excited over.
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For the most part I agree, but I think in the case of Plurk the service offers some things Twitter doesn’t. On the surface it may be a copycat of Twitter, but the extra features, particualrly the threaded replies give it something Twitter doesn’t have,Plurk does promote conversation and quite honestly I’ve had better conversations there than I’ve had at Twitter. Reaching critical mass is important, but I do think it will get there as Plurk offers something a little different.
FTA: "For micro-blogging the power is in the conversation and right now Twitter wins hands-down. During Twitters technical issues, where it seemed like it was down more than it was up, many people tried out other services, however the majority of users have always come back to Twitter in some capacity"I actually think Plurk handles conversation in a better way and during the outtages, many switched over to Plurk and never looked back. Twitter will always have its front-runner advantages and their position (from a macro-perspective) does look unshakeable (much like Digg for social news) but they’ll always only be ’King’ to some and not all users, which itself suggests that there’s not just room for other services but certain notable flaws with Twitter itself. That itself is worth noting, apart from the usual look at userbase size + traffic.