Getting the word out: Plurk, Twitter, ShareThis

One of the weirdest (but coolest) assignments I got in school was to draw up a timeline for the evolution of man. For this fourth-grader to get a chronological perspective of how long it took for us to get where we are... empty gargantuan oceans of time separating the first changes from primal cells to multi-celled organisms, then other species interacting in man's history over time in shorter and shorter intervals...

Anyway, Plurk works along those (time) lines, in a way that at first seems very similar to Twitter: Post a little blurb, people see it, this time in a day-to-day timeline that stretches across a few screens.

One of the neater innovations is a Karma rating... and it reacts to your (in)actions 24/7! Talk about building brand loyalty! Good actions include thoughtful (I'm guessing long and don't contain links? :P ) posts ("Plurks"), and inviting friends and getting accepted, while bad karma comes from spammy Plurks and rejections from your "friends" (don't they know your Karma is at stake?).

I like the effort they've put into this, but I would really appreciate a little menu somewhere that lets you look back an hour, six hours, a day instead of dragging repeatedly until you get to what catches your eye. Time is pretty important these days and some efficiency would go a long way to helping me recommend the service. Still, it's cheap as free, and I like the widget option for now. Something smaller instead of the mailbox-sized widget they offer would be a help, but I think I'll incorporate it soon, as I'm looking to build up the blog first and focus on revenue second.

Twitter, to me, seems a little too ADD-encouraging, but now that I've looked at it, it really is a sign of the times. People don't have time to go to a webpage, edit HTML, publish it and go back to work just to let people know a tiny little bit of information. I'm still a little unclear about why posting what you had for dinner makes you worth following, but Joel Comm actually opened my eyes to what Twitter can do for you with his free report. Not only can you simply hand out blog link after blog link after blog link in a cynical fashion, but you can use the people following you for a sounding board, even networking and research purposes.

And ShareThis is a no- or low-brainer; it's an amalgamation of the biggest social media applications out there. While I suspect there is some debate about allowing Technorati to show up in a ShareThis button and its own widget (has anyone had experience with either side of the issue?), you can customize the services to use in a very easy-to-generate widget. Choose carefully and research; you may not want to post a link on relationships into a gaming application.

If you pick up one of these accounts, post your Plurk and Twitter links here as comments!

http://twitter.com/lioneloliva
http://www.plurk.com/user/sumosalesman


See you again soon!