I spent this past week doing a “Plurkathon”, which means I spend as much time Plurking as reasonably feasible. Since I run a business and take care of an infant, my plurkathon to someone else may seem to be a plurking stroll and nowhere near its neologism.
Here’s what I started out with on July 6:
Karma 60.51
# of Plurks 307
# of Plurk Responses 934
Profile Views 835
Here’s what I have as of today July 11:
Karma 62.10
# of Plurks 349
# of Plurk Responses 1558
Profile Views 1056
I ran a Plurkathon and all I got was this lousy 1.59 increase in Karma!
But seriously… I didn’t do a Plurkathon to raise Karma points. I was experimenting with different ways to engage on Plurk. Some observations:
First I began by throwing out a bunch of questions, and some were picked up and others got 0 response. This led me to try a different approach:
I began to focus more on responding to topics I was interested in. I also began muting many plurks that I knew I wasn’t going to follow or that was really a “lifestream” (i.e. “I am going grocery shopping! I’m picking out the produce! I’m running my credit card through the machine right now!”………… Ok enough with that already, we get it, you are really plugged in online and can use one handed typing while doing everything else with the other…)
I used Private Plurking to engage in more in-depth discussions with specific groups of people instead of opening the topic to public, and…
I ALMOST participated in the tail end of a Plurkshop if I didn’t have a baby diaper emergency that required a bottle of carpet cleaner and about 100 baby wipes or paper towels.
I came away with firm belief that Plurk is a useful platform that at best, generates new ideas (I came away with 18 potential article topics for the day when my baby goes to college and I finally have time to write articles again) and at worst, is a highly addictive online water cooler.
I can’t wait for the next time when I do another Plurkathon!
