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06.18.08 The Race For Micro-Messaging World Domination  By Sean Maguire The folks over at Plurk must have some really good Karma. How else can you explain the incredible luck associated with rolling out your new micro-messaging (I can't bring myself to call it blogging) platform, at the same time your chief competitor (Twitter), has hit the application scaling wall and is experiencing severe service outages? Any others getting tired of seeing a bunch of tweety birds lifting a whale? It was cute the first couple of times. Now? Not so much. Next time I see that thing, there's gonna be a harpoon flying through my display! Adding insult to injury, when Twitter is up and running (yes, it still happens occasionally), it is being consistently used to pimp broadcast and promote Plurk. The irony is striking. Such are the problems when a company unexpectedly finds itself realizing too much success, too rapidly - as Twitter did. In response to a question on the Twitter blog, developer Alex Payne had this to say,
"My understanding is that Twitter started as a one-day project to explore sharing status via SMSthat Twitter would eventually evolve into a messaging system in its own right wasn't conceptualized from the get-go".
A one day project? Now that's what I call foresight! The bottom line? Twitter developers did not build this as an enterprise class application, capable of scaling to meet a dramatic increase in demand. Those in the "software know", realize that core architecture problems are not something that can be solved overnight - no matter how many CPU's you throw at the problem. Conversely, it currently seems by both the robustness of the application (features & function), which far surpass that of Twitter and the relative stability of the application, that the folks at Plurk did have success in mind and they are currently capitalizing on Twitter's failings, as disenchanted users go from a "Just another Twitter clone", to an "I'm loving Plurk" mindset. Based on a quick survey (on Twitter), it seems that most users are still remaining loyal, however frustrations are clearly rising. The race is on for micro-messaging world domination. Will Twitter developers turn a simple lark into a soaring eagle? Can Plurk hit one out of the plark? What say you Pilgrims? You can follow me on Twitter or Plurk. At least for now! Comments About the Author: Sean Maguire is a contributing writer for Marketing Pilgrim. |
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