PLURK!

Through my NECC network, I was recently made aware of a new Social networking tool.... PLURK!~ That sounds like such a silly name... but I just came upon the meaning:
People + Lurk = PLURK
Plurk is very similar to TWITTER, and is an online 'journal' that lets you publish and share thoughts. Just like Twitter, you are limited to 140 characters when 'plurking'. The layout is set up like a timeline and is very easy to follow. You can scroll left to right and see posts that have been added throughout the day.
The one thing I really like about Plurk is that it displays updates to responses and posts. Plurk easily allows you to locate friends, through Twitter, email accounts or sending invitations. At first, I had trouble uploading my Twitter friends... but I think that glitch is fixed. One of the things I really like about Plurk are the "qualifiers". These are color coded words which are used to start plurks. You can choose to use them, or just plurk on your own. Another cool aspect of Plurk is that you can share images or YouTube videos. I'm anxious to try this feature.
Plurk also has something called "karma" You receive a karma score for adding friends, updating your profile, and of course for plurking.
The privacy option is similar to Twitter, as you can choose to make your plurks only viewable to friends, or to the whole world. You can organize your friends into cliques also. Plurk also allows you to have FANS... who are contacts that follow your timeline but are not on your friends list. (You have to have privacy set to whole world in order to have FANS)
Plurk also has a mobile version... so you can plurk from your phone, and offers a WIDGET to add to your wiki, blog or website.
So... for the past couple of days, I have been playing around on Plurk... accepting new friends, and plurking myself. I have become used to the layout and find that it's easy to use. However, I am still a fan of Twitter.... there's just something about my Twitter community that I won't drop for Plurk. I'm just hoping that Twitter solves their technical issues with overload on the site... because lately I've been seeing that whale an awful lot!