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My final guest post for the day, is another good one from Lisa Thomas-Tench.
So Plurk is all about creating karma. I’m not sure I get it.
I’m familiar with the term but I’m not sure how it applies to this particular form of social media.
Let’s look at what increases your Plurk karma: microposting, replying, getting more ‘friends’ and ‘fans’, using icons in your posts, and inviting people to join.
I mean, to me, karma’s about doing good and being rewarded. Plurk’s about talking about yourself in, possibly, a very inane way. It’s about being popular and joining a clique. It’s about being able to click on smiley faces. It’s about having the time to obsess about your little karma number going up and down.
Essentially, Plurk is engaging you in a game rather than a distinct form of social connectivity. Unlike Twitter, where the content of your tweets determines your value in the community, Plurk values frequency and absurdity (what’s the difference between a ‘friend’ and a ‘fan’? No one I’ve asked on Plurk even seems to care).
How does this increase one’s ability to connect and share through media? I’m not sure yet if it does. In fact, I think that it bypasses the ‘social’ part of social media in a way that encourages anti-social behaviours, to a certain extent. People trying to drive up their karma numbers will pollute the timeline with valueless fluff and winking yellow faces, bringing in additional players to the game.
Twitter may be falling apart half the time, but I’ll take dharma over karma any day of the week.
1403 days ago
[...] Buzz Networker Recent Guest Post: Plurk Karma. Twitter Dharma? Topics: Social networking PageRank: 3 Alexa Rank: [...]
p.s if someone removes you because you just added to get points.. you acutually loose points for that in addition to loosing points for spamming etc..
I on the other hand couldn’t disagree more. I found twitter hard to manage… hard to follow and clunky. First I tried using twirl to see if that would help and that was of no use at all. When I found plurk i was surprised at how easy it was to find those near you or as far away as you wanted.. and it was all layed out in a graphicaly pleasing way. And sure some people just add friends or just post.. but you get deductions for posting to much or spamming someone. I really see it as a chance to reward people who would already be participating.. and promote shy people’s participation also. Karma is about doing something good.. and when you type out an interesting microblog.. or share something youve seen on the net.. you are rewarded because people see it .. post about it… and add you wich means you get karma.. hard to understand?
Thanks for this post.
I (heart) twitter despite its flaws – Plurk drives me mad. I tried it out and couldn’t upload my friends properly and I didn’t enjoy the interface. When I logged in next, I had -2 karma. Wha-huh?
Social media which relies too heavily on being the loudest and having the most “friends” reminds me of junior high. So you’re the cheerleader with the most signatures in your yearbook… so what?
Plurk’s karma system is unsettlingly similar to that of Slashdot. It doesn’t work there and it doesn’t work on Plurk. It undermines the whole nature of organic, authentic conversation by encouraging a popularity contest of sorts. Slashdot has its karma whores; soon enough, I fear, Plurk will suffer the same.