It’s no surprise that twitter can be a bit unstable from time to time. Twitter is probably the only service I know that’s almost more down than it’s up, and still have a loyal fan base and increase it’s number of users.
But what are the alternatives?
There are a lot of similar micro-blogging services out there, but can they replace twitter?
If you take a look at the various alternatives to twitter are they really an alternative?
Pownce:
About a year ago I wrote a post about Pownce and twitter. I compare the two services, but what really hit me was, that a year ago I wrote that twitter is unstable.
Twitter is still unstable and Pownce hasn’t replaced twitter. Why is that?
Pownce doesn’t have the simplicity of twitter. No one (except a few) has really bothered making any services for Pownce either and perhaps Pownce is just too feature-heavy?!
As always you are welcome to friend me on Pownce.
Plurk:
The brand new microblogging tool is called Plurk and everybody are talking/blogging about it. It’s probably the closest thing at the moment to twitter.
The timeline is very different and takes a little getting-used-to. However when some of your friends plurk, you can respond directly to their plurks by just clicking on it.
Plurk has a clever little extra thing that might be addicting to some users. It’s called Karma. It’s a score and the more you plurk, respong to plurks and add friends, the more Karma you get.
All the big blogger people are plurking. If they like it might breakthrough. Perhaps they should have waited and launched Plurk at some big blogger conference. That’s what twitter and Friendfeed did.
Some might also see Friendfeed as an alternative to twitter, but honestly I haven’t really jumped on the Friendfeed bandwagon yet.
I’m still not sure what to do with Friendfeed, but I would love to know, so if you have any advice or ideas, please don’t hesitate to share.
Which tool do you see as an alternative to twitter? Will you stick with twitter or move to another microblogging service?
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Of course, both twitter and plurk's IM bots are down at the moment, so....
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Plurk sounds really good and I think I'm gonna give it a go. The one click reply thing is nothing new to Twitter users who use Twhirl/Snitter/Twitteriffic etc but this Karma thing actually sounds pretty cool. Are there any clients for Plurk? I don't want to have to open a new FF tab to post updates...
Dan
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@Mrs. Micah: Welcome to TBN. Good to have you here! Twhirl is definitely my favourite desktop app too. Now if only twitter would remain stable it would be even better ;)
@Dan: Plurk's biggest drawback at the moment is the lack of an API. I want plurk in twhirl.
So for now you need another tab in FF :-/
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I've been playing with ping.fm and it allows me to post to both twitter and plurk via IM (to ping.fm's bot) and that get's me halfway there, but not being able to receive is a bummer - I feel like I'm talking to myself.
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I also was quite put off Plurk by the number of 13 and 14 year olds on it.
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