16 December 2008

Posted at 23:17h in gavin heaton, plurk, servant of chaos, stan lee, twitter by

I've been meaning to post about Twitter for a while. It is fundamentally flawed. Both the concept and the design. It is ridiculously hard to read or thread conversations, if you watch more than 50 people it is easy to miss something and the layout is simply atrocious. Yet it continues to gain popularity. I thought newcomer Plurk (much less fundamentally flawed) would overthrow it, but even I turned back to Twitter eventually. I think Twitter some how manages to be successful because it's addictive. Once you've started it's hard to give it up. Although most start by asking, "Isn't it just like updating your Facebook status?", it grows on you. Stan Lee signed up just two weeks ago and I think he's now in need of a patch to control the cravings. His page used to display a badge that said he wasn't on the Twitter bandwagon, but that's changed just a little hasn't it, Stan? It's hard to explain but I think Gavin Heaton summed it up best when he said, "You get out what you put in"....

07 June 2008

Posted at 17:41h in plurk, twitter by

I think if you signed up for Plurk right now you'd still be considered an early adopter. Although there is a lot of buzz going around at the moment so get in fast. I quite like the concept and it seems to out do Twitter in nearly every way. The only problem is there are no banner ads. No forms of advertising what so ever. Sure in the short term that's great for me and you but how are they going to pay their costs? This becomes particularly important with their exponentially growing traffic. Like many social networks, they are going to struggle to monetise the site. And by introducing advertising now, you risk alienating your community. Where does this leave them in the long term?...