Threaded Conversation
At first, the only evidence I found of conversation threads were long strings of people telling each other "Good Night". Snore. But yesterday, I responded to a quick plurk by Mack Collier about what kind of advice us social media folks give to our clients about how much/often to blog. It spawned an impromptu Plurkshop (Connie Reece's witty term) on social media, which several people found helpful, and I think we all took a little something away from that conversation. It's a great demonstration of why Plurk's ability to thread a conversation can be a great group discussion forum. (Read it here)
Unexpected Community Support
There was a young woman on Plurk last night that lost a close friend in an accident. And I thought it was interesting that she chose to share her sad news in that forum. Of course, there was an outpouring of support and condolences, which I'm sure helped in some way, and it was touching to see some truly heartfelt notes of support. And I realized that Plurk's advantage over Twitter in this scenario wasn't a closer personal connection, per se. It was the opportunity to have an uninterrupted thread of support - one unfractured by "my new blog post is up" in the main Twitterstream - that kept it completely focused on the issue (and the person) at hand.
My takeaway for social media in small business was mostly from the Plurkshop and the overwhelming agreement by all of us about the importance of:
- Having a plan
- Starting before it's "perfect"
- Listening before you start
- Practice, tweak, and tweak again.
5 comments:
Glad you decided to come over to the Plurky side ;) I think that at least for now, it's much easier for people to connect and become friends on Plurk than it is on Twitter. I think it's mostly due to there simply being fewer people on Plurk, but threaded convos also play a role.
These two work together to create an environment where its easy for people to come together and connect.
I totally agree, and the more I use it, the more I love it. Like a hybrid of IM and chat rooms of yore. (Can the 90s be yore?) Thanks so much for your comments.
Great post - this is all about building community, and Plurk is showing terrific potential. Witness another Plurkshop tonight. Fantastic! Thanks for playing such a great role.
The spontaneous "plurkshops" show off the strength of Plurk's threaded conversation. It is kind of funny that it harks back to chat rooms, but that just shows that the desire to connect online has been around a long time. I look forward to your post tomorrow w/ the summary of our discussion tonight.
It's so funny, because I remember being so addicted to the chat rooms back in the day, and to date, nothing had quite captivated me like those did. IM is great for one on one conversation, Plurk is super for engaging a group. Can't wait to keep plurking with all of you.
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