Plurkular has been listed in the blogroll of Plurk’s blog for quite some time now, but that’s not necessarily readily visible to the users of Plurk. This community creator icon, on the other hand, provides that same type of information in the space where users spend their time, in the timeline.

Now, the next time I add someone as a friend and they take a look at my profile to validate who I am, they’ll see that I am the creator of a Plurk community site, which hopefully lends some additional credibility to me.

This method of recognizing star users seems to be unique in the microblogging world, though its not a far stretch from how Plurk awards stars to those who recruit new users to Plurk.

Back when I was trying to name this site, I did a lot of brainstorming about Plurk-related names. Plurl was something I had come up with (which I thought would do great as a URL-shortening service because Plurk + URL = Plurl). To my disappointment, the .com domain had already been purchased and I didn’t have the skills to put the applurkation together.

The good thing is there are plenty of Plurkers out there that are far more skilled at coding than I, and Chris Prakoso (mahadewa) is one of those people. You might recognize his name from his work on Plurkerati, the “Technorati of the Plurkosphere”. It appears that Chris was getting a bit bored with only writing code for one website, so he decided to launch a new website that shortens URLs and then posts them to Plurk, called Plurl.

The tool is easy to use and everything is done through the site, located at http://plurl.me, a great alternative to the .com domain.

The process is simple and will have you posting shortened URLs in no time.

1. Paste your long URL into the input box and click Plurl it!
   
2. The site shortens your URL and displays the new Plurl. Now click Plurk it!
   
3. Enter your Plurk username, password and a title for the Plurl. You can also switch to the advanced mode and customize the entire message.
   
4. Click Post and your new Plurl will be Plurked on your behalf.
   

As I mentioned on the app page for this tool, I would love to see a bookmarklet created that would allow the user to create Plurls and Plurk them on the fly, but that’s always something that could be added later.

Chris did a great job with this site. I’ve got to congratulate and thank him for all of his efforts.

Thanks Chris!

But today something was different. I hadn’t heard anything on Plurk about the PlurkCAST today. There was no post on Plurkable announcing the show schedule. What was going on?

I clicked over to the TalkShoe page and joined the chat to see what was going on. At the time, only KDFrawg and DebInDenver were present. Eric Odom, the show’s regular host, was nowhere to be found. After some quick online detective work, no one had any information on where Eric was or what he was up to. Meanwhile, a few more users had started gathering in the TalkShoe room.

At about 4:15pm, it was decided that the PlurkCAST had to go on, with or without its host. KDFrawg quickly opened up a new TalkShoe room and phone line and we Plurked the new room ID in as many places as possible. Eventually, all or most of the regulars finally made their way in.

KDFrawg ended up hosting the impromptu and sporadic event, taking calls from several different people and chatting up any topic that arose.

Here’s a quick rundown on what was discussed:

• The Looks-Like-Plurk Contest would be postponed another week in effort to bring in more entries
• Recent Plurkshop results and future events scheduled, all chronicled at Plurkshops.com
• Plurk’s rollout of custom CSS for user profiles

I was able to get on the phone again this week (yay!) and talk about the recent things happening here on Plurkular, as well as give my two cents on custom CSS and some associated audience fear.

All in all, it was another great PlurkCAST, even though our host wasn’t able to be there. I’ve got to thank KDFrawg personally for keeping the show going and everyone else who called or listened in.

Without the Plurkommunity, the PlurkCAST wouldn’t exist. You make it possible and you make it work.

You can download today’s PlurkCAST, or follow the discussion that ensued on Plurk afterwards.

As the thought started to sink in, however, I started to worry a bit. Amix’s profile looks nice, as do several others, but when users like Will_00 post tiled graphic backgrounds, things start to get questionable. MySpace anyone?

Plurk does a good job trying to help those who are unfamiliar with CSS, but you can really only go so far. The code can be taught, but style and design is something you’ve just got to have an eye for.

Because I like this latest update to Plurk and think it will make a lot of people happy, I hope that the users don’t abuse it and turn it into something to be scared.

However, lucky for Plurk users, you don’t actually have to visit anyone’s profile pages to see what they are saying or doing. Just visit the page one time, long enough to see the ‘Add as Friend’ or ‘Add as Fan’ buttons, and you’re done. That’s an advantage Plurk has over a place like MySpace, which requires you to endure those awful animations and glitzy profiles just to figure out what your friends have been up to.

Share Your Profile

Also, it appears mahadewa has started a group on Flickr for users to post and share their Plurk profile themes. No one has uploaded anything yet. Several profile screenshots have now been uploaded.

More Resources for Styling Your Profile

• notmuchmore has put together an excellent post with a few more details and step-by-step instructions on how to customize the CSS for your profile. (Added 07/22/08)
• ZenElements, has also written a great guide for modifying your Plurk CSS. (Added 07/23/08)

Please visit each of these resources and let us know how what you think of them.

In the event that you’ve hit a missing page or are trying to post a message while Plurk is doing maintenance behind the scenes, chances are you’ve seen the A-Team screen. It’s got the lovable crew from the hit 80s TV show and includes a short message to tide users over.

“Plurk is currently unavailable. We are working on bringing the site up again. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

On Friday, many Plurkers were introduced to a new side of Plurk and a new fail screen. It had been announced that Plurk was going down for a short period of time while the A-Team performed some routine maintenance. Nobody thought anything of it.

Users were greeted by a message similar to the one from before, but this new fail screen also included the lovable Plurk monsters and a short poem.

We are the world
We are Plurk creatures
We are the ones who make a brighter day
For all the hoomans…

Once again, Plurk’s quirky sense of humor kept users entertained and at bay while the site was down. Everyone got a kick out of the new screen and had a good laugh.

Then an hour passed.

Plurk still wasn’t back up.

Had something gone wrong? Another hour passed. Users began to worry. Some flocked over to Twitter and started adding Plurk friends, tweeting about what was going on.

With no response from Plurk or the A-Team, many were left wondering what would become of Plurk. Then, finally, 13 hours later, Plurk finally came back online.

Much to everyone’s comfort, Amix appeared in front of the Plurkosphere on the official Plurk blog and apologized to everyone for the extended period of downtime.

What he was able to share, and ultimately what Plurk benefited from, was described as follows:

• The goal of this update was to prepare ourselves for rapid feature deployments without the need to take the site offline to complete them.
• We introduced a new tabbed filtering view for the timeline which allows you to better filter out your plurks into: all plurks, just your plurks, and now, just private plurks.
• The update allows us to slice and dice your timeline in more interesting ways and offer you additional filtering options down the road (think ‘Plurks Responded To’ and ‘Favorited Plurks’).
• We purged a lot of the gunk in Plurk’s arteries and gave it some Aspirin and now it should be livelier and more responsive than ever.

So, even though Plurk was down for the better part of a day, the community seems to be better off because of it. As Amix described, the updates that were made should allow for seamless maintenance in the future and less interuptions for the users, something that should be appreciated by all.

What did you do while Plurk was down? Did you revert back to Twitter, much like most of us moved to Plurk when Twitter was down? Did you have second thoughts about this microblogging startup?

As ThoughtWrong blogged and Plurked earlier, Plurk has released some updated features for the mobile version of Plurk. We still don’t have much more than a bare bones app, but the new features DO add some great functionality.

In the original version of mobile Plurk, you could only view the timeline populated with you and your friends’ Plurks. Now, after adding a few short links, mobile users have several new ways to browse the Plurk timeline:

• View Only My Plurks
• View Friends and My Plurks
• View Only Private Plurks

These functions have been available on the main web version forever, but it really makes sense for the Plurker who’s out and about. Simply flick over to your private Plurks and you can be sure you don’t miss that message about meeting your friend for lunch.

Since apps like Plurkit are basically just an Adobe AIR version of Plurk Mobile, they should update automatically to reflect these changes.

What do you think about this latest update? Do you find it useful?

We’ve seen several instances where the A-Team has interacted on blog posts from Plurkular and Plurkiverse, but this was the first time anyone had called in and spoken with the PlurkCAST audience.

Alvin said that he and the rest of the A-Team were very happy with how supportive the entire Plurkommunity has been. Although he couldn’t share actual numbers, he did say that web traffic is healthy.

In the past month, much of the blogosphere has been up in arms about whether Plurk would topple Twitter as the microblogging king, but Alvin said the A-Team has a much different outlook on the situation.

“Plurk is not trying to be a microblogging killer. We feel that the web is big enough for everyone to coexist.”

Though we had an agenda for the show, much of it was thrown to the wind with Alvin joining. It allowed the crowd to have several questions answered. Below is some of the feedback we were able to gather.

PlurkCAST: What does the Plurk team think about third-party apps?

Alvin: We don’t know what to think about them.

PlurkCAST: Are the stats websites having an adverse affect on Plurk?

Alvin: We’re not sure how they are getting all of those statistics, but they’re not hurting us.

PlurkCAST: What is your reaction to the latest Mashable article about Plurk?

Alvin: ‘Ok’. I just read it and go on.

Alvin also mentioned that when the A-Team seemed to be having downer days, it seems that something from the Plurk community would always cheer them up, like badseedjen’s Plurk cake.

“Now you know why new Plurk features are so slow to be released. We’re all sitting around looking at Plurk pastries.”

Again, everyone was grateful to have Alvin on the PlurkCAST and we all hope to see other members calling in to future shows.

If you missed today’s PlurkCAST or usually just download them afterwards, maybe this will get you excited about attending live. You never know when someone from the A-Team might drop in.

Agenda

• Plurk Cake
• Plurker Beta
• Plurk Homepage Design
• Plurk Promotion - Good Promotion Techniques vs. Truly Obnoxious via aaronL
• PlurkPix.com
• Plurk Junkies on Ning and Facebook

Please rate and write a review for the PlurkCAST to help us promote it.

About PlurkCAST

What is it?
The PlurkCAST is a weekly show highlighting the web’s hottest cutting edge social community, Plurk.com. The weekly show will provide updates to Plurk with regards to features, upgrades, applications, API, tops users, and anything else the community may find relevant and interesting.

When is it?
The PlurkCAST airs every Wednesday at 4:00 PM Central Time. The show will last in duration for approximately 30 to 60 minutes, depending on the news and discussion topics available.

Who can haz the mic?
PlurkCAST is hosted by Eric Odom of Plurkable.com and KDFrawg of Plurkiverse.com, with various co-hosts joining in each week. All Plurkers are welcome to join in via live chat, as well as live call in for on air discussion.

How do you tune in?
PlurkCAST will be aired live on TalkShoe.com until August, at which time the team will move to Ustream for live video shows. An account is not needed to join in at TalkShoe and all shows are archived and available for download via podcast/mp3 formats.

• badseedjenn baked a Plurk cake.
• DarinRMcClure is Plurking in his sleep to save Karma.
• Tamar is still crashing Firefox.
• Everyone is talking about tonight’s Security & Microblogging Plurkshop.
• BarbaraKB is learning how people found out about Plurk.
• Connie will be walking for life in Second Life on July 19.

If you’ve got a recommendation for next week’s Monday Fun Plinks, please use the contact form and send them our way.

The people who do see the home page are new users and onlookers thinking about joining the service. When someone recommends Plurk or posts a link on another site, those users make their way over and immediately form their first impressions.

The Old Home Page

Up until today, Plurk had been using an orange-dominated page that included their bonehead logo, a list of interesting Plurkers, a unique form of signing up (by clicking the Plurk button) and the interesting tagline, “Plurk is a place that lets you publish and share your thoughts, emo-ness, #^@%!*%(& and loves.”

Everyone who came to the site was first intrigued by the logo, everyone trying to figure out what it was and why Plurk was using it. It was unlike anything other Web 2.0 and microblogging sites were using. Aside from the simple graphics and call to action, there wasn’t much on the page. It was a clean design that left users with one option, to begin plurking.

The New Home Page

Today, Plurk released a new design for the home page and there are lots of mixed feelings. I responded to ZenElements‘ question about the new home page, as did several others.

Following up on my response to ZenElements, I just can’t find the new home page attractive. Unless you count the first timeline screenshot, they’ve completely abandoned their color scheme, they’ve changed their slogan to “Plurk is a social journal for your life” and they’ve stripped the page entirely of their logo.

The Colors

In my opinion, the new colors are hideous. The original oranges were fairly unique, and though they took some time to adjust to, that orange color became part of Plurk’s brand. Now they are using a hot fuschia backgroud with a rainbow trout page gradient.

The Graphics

The strange creature graphics, also a seemingly iconic part of Plurk’s brand, are now absent from the page. If you look hard enough you will spot them in the timeline screenshot background, but they are definitely not front and center as before.

I think including screenshots of the timeline was a good move, but that’s the only improvement I can note in terms of the new graphical design.

The Message

With this visual redesign, Plurk has also forcefully changed the message they are portraying. Where before Plurk was essentially described as a place to share your thoughts, ideas and conversations, now they are ‘a social journal for your life”. For me, I would actually rather see the mass of ‘lifestream’ Plurks decrease rather than increase. Using Plurk as a ’social journal’ also seems much more one-sided and less conversational, as opposed to a place where people ask questions and participate in discussions.

Also, a subhead to the main slogan was also added. When the page was first released, it read “Tired of Stupid Social Networks?”, but was quickly met with objections from Plurkers saying it made Plurk seem childish, so they quickly adapted it to read “Tired of other Social Networks?”.

When I read the new subheading, I felt like Plurk was trying to hard to make themselves seem legit. “Use us because we are cooler” it seemed to be saying to me. I believe that if you have a good product and respond to the users who support you, the masses will come. You don’t have to sell that to them.

The Call to Action

The new design includes a revised sign up button, now simply stating ‘Sign Up Now’ instead of the unique registration process from before. This new take on registering looks like every other site out there. Maybe its because it works, but there’s also something to be said about being unique.

I do like the new login bar at the top for existing users, as the old version made you click into a secondary page that allowed you to log in to the site.

The Verdict

If you haven’t realized it by now, I am completely against the new home page for Plurk. I feel that the A-Team took something that worked well and represented their brand and twisted it into something complete different and distant.

The other thing I wonder about is whether or not this new design will get carried through the rest of the Plurk site, as currently everything else still follows the old format.

My Questions for Plurk and the A-Team

In hope that someone will respond, I have a few questions:

• What drove this decision to redesign the home page?
  • Was it the Plurkosphere and the users?
• What benefits does the new design bring?
  • Why should we support it?
• Will you listen to the masses (as you have before), or will you stand by your decision for change?

If you have questions of your own about the new design, please include them here in the comments. Hopefully we will get a few members of the A-Team to respond.