BELLAMYBUDIMAN

I had the idea on writing this entry earlier tonight, when I was having a threaded conversation on Twitter with Aulia Masna and Pria Purnama on a statement started by Amir Karimuddin. You can see the thread immortalized by Pria here, to get a sense on what I’m talking about here. Long story short, there has always been a great debate between which one is better. Twitter or Plurk? Each has its own loyal users, and each has their own niche. Or so they said, at least from my perspective.

As a web 2.0 adopter, I sometime feel the urge to try these different kinds of social networking sites. I have to admit that I left most of them with no updates, or to make my life easier, just as mirrors to what I’ve been doing on my social networking site of choice. As to this point, I subjectively chose Twitter to be my favorite. Why? Well there tons of reasons. I even like this better than Facebook, and to prove my point, even Facebook wants to be like Twitter. Without trying to sound like I’m endorsed by Twitter, here are some of the reasons why:

• It’s simple, you microblog in 140 characters or less and off you go. No buts and no required formats.
• It packs the power punch for you to come up with literally numerous ideas on what to do with it.
• It has an API. What’s an API? It’s an Application Programming Interface which allows you to send to and retrieve data from Twitter, and do practically whatever you want with it (see above).
• It has numerous desktop clients and mobile apps on a plethora of operating systems that makes your interaction with the service even more elegantly facilitated.

Now let’s take a look at Plurk:

• It views status updates on a horizontally-laid layout. I don’t see how this improves anything, usability-wise. Because most people scroll vertically, and scrolling horizontally would be quite inefficient.
• It has that annoying Plurk signature URL when you sync your updates with Twitter. I got to tell you, Plurk users, these URLs don’t even make themselves useful and they’re piling up junks in the Twitter timeline.
• It doesn’t have an official API, so I don’t think developers could pretty much do anything with it. Well it does have an unofficial API, if you must.
• The karma system is just pointless. Seriously, what the hell does it do anyway? To me, it seems like it’s just Plurk’s unique way to differentiate from Twitter, a niche or some sort. A niche that doesn’t actually do something.

I think it’s clear on why I chose Twitter over Plurk. It offers me a great deal of flexibility and accessibility as a designer and an occasional programmer, which is probably what the web 2.0 is all about for me. I have to stress that this is my point of view, it doesn’t mean that I’m starting a war between Plurkers and Tweeters. I do have my own Plurk account as well, but I simply don’t care about it.

And oh, before I forgot, since this post could possibly bring out a gunfight, especially when it appears as a note on my Facebook account, on behalf the geeks (geeks, not nerds, or dorks in case you can’t differentiate that) that I know on Twitter, if you don’t even have a clue on what I’m talking about here, please don’t even try to make a comment that will potentially humiliate yourselves. Geeks, you know what I’m talking about, and you know that I have to be extra specific in explaining things like this to people like them :D