Twitter VS. Plurk: The Breakdown.

Micro-blogging services have exploded lately and more and more people are using the two big ones, Twitter and Plurk. It's basically like texting but everyone you are friends with can see what you write. Most people are members of both but I'm going to lay out the differences of the two services.

Simplicity of making friends or accepting followers.
Twitter makes this very easy by allowing you to follow someone which means you can receive their tweets. If they follow you back then you are basically friends and you will both receive each others tweets.

Plurk has a system thats a little different. You can be a fan of someone and receive their plurks but they will not receive yours. With Plurk you have to ask to be someones friend just like other social networks. This system is very familiar to most people and I feel is the better of the two. Although, it seems to take a day or so for a new friend to show up on my friends list.

Tools, tools, applications, and more tools.
If you want to use some sort of tool or application with your micro-blogger service, then Twitter is your obvious choice. Tyler over at SMM Guru compiled a master list of Twitter tools and applications. Are this many tools necessary? No. It makes things way to complicated.

There are a few tools for Plurk, but for the most part, it's unnecessary. Plurk's messaging service allows you to reply to other people's messages directly in a little chat box and every time you login, it tells you how many new replies there are. The tools for Plurk in the link above just add a few new things to Plurk like polls or pictures while the tools for Twitter change the whole dynamic.

Very different layouts.
I am just going to come right out and say that Twitter's layout sucks. It's very bland and annoying. Yes you can use a tool instead of the actual Twitter site and you can change colors and add a picture to the background, but ultimately the programmers didn't design a great layout.

Plurk's layout on the other hand is very innovative and fun. The time line layout makes the messages easy to read and the ability to reply to each one allows for better communication. The karma idea isn't a new one to the internet as forums have started using it to try and deal with trolls, but it's a cool idea none the less. The higher karma you have the better options you have access too. It's quite easy to improve your karma which doesn't alienate those who have few friends.

Conclusion.
They are both great assets in helping build your social persona and being apart of both is most likely your best option. But, in my opinion Plurk is the better looking of the two. There are more people on Twitter but Plurk is steadily gaining ground. If you aren't a member of either you probably should be.