Iris' Social Network Guide for Second Life Users, Part 3: What You Need to Know About Plurk

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you caught the first and second part of this series of posts, then you already have a pretty good idea of what your options are when it comes to tying a social network into your Second Life self. What you may still lack is an idea of the best way to use these networks. That's particularly true when it comes to Plurk, which is so popular among SL users that they allow you to select "Second Life" as your location. Outside of Second Life however you'd be hard pressed to find people who know what Plurk is, nevermind how to make the best use of it. And that's where part 3 comes in...

Reader Ever Afterr phrased the Plurk dilemma well in her comment:

I'm a long-time SL veteran but also a recently returned newbie, and the marriage of SL and social media is completely new to me. I was disappointed to see that Facebook is abjectly refusing to allow SL residents to main profiles in their avatar names; especially frustrating considering the built-in "share on Facebook" option right in the viewer. But thank you to Indigo for mentioning Google+. That looks like a promising alternative.

Plurk is somewhat of a mystery to me; I've read that it's both essential to bloggers and also something to steer clear of because of drama and cliquishness. Of all the social media sites, that one seems to engender the most divided opinions. Would be really interested in an article dedicated to Plurk specifically, and whether it's recommended for a new resident to dip their toes in, especially if they don't blog and/or if they blog in a niche that doesn't delve into SL fashion.

If all you want to do is link to SL things and be linked to SL things, go to Reddit. If all you want to do is have conversations and discussions about SL things, take your pick of the traditional forums. Photography? Flickr. But if you want to engage with a little bit of everything, or if you're a blogger specifically, Plurk is probably the best choice. While it's true that Plurk has been adopted with particular ferocity by the SL fashion community, they're far from the only folks around -- not to mention that most of them do still have interests outside of fashion. We're all people and we all have diverse interests, right? As for the cliques and drama, every time you get a large enough group of people together such things are bound to emerge. Plurk is no exception, but in my opinion the advantages it offers far outweigh the disadvantages.

As I mentioned in the first post in this series, Plurk hovers somewhere between the broadcasting of Twitter and the engagement of a forum. It makes having an open conversation easy, but still concise and current. That's the most important thing to remember about Plurk: It's about the conversations. It's about interacting and participating. It's about sharing yourself and your content and responding to what others share in equal measure.

The best way to start out with Plurk is to make an account and do a little digging until you find a few of your friends and favorite content creators. Maybe that content is avatar fashion, maybe it's snapshots or machinima, maybe it's blog posts. Whatever it is, Plurk is a good way to see what they're up to and interact with them a bit here and there. Don't come out of nowhere liking and replurking and responding to every single breath they take of course, but just... Relax a bit and talk to folks.

The next thing to remember is not to make your Plurk presence too one-sided. If all you do is engage, and maybe post "Goodnight!" and "Good morning!" every day, you're going to come off a little weird. Maybe even creepy. On the other hand, if all you do is post links to your own work and gush about your life, you're going to have a hard time making any new connections. You'll just seem self-absorbed, and that's not appealing on any social network.

Final tip? Diversify. I know as I've been discussing all these social networks, I've treated each one more of less separate from the others, but most people using their SL personas on social media seem to do so spanning more than a few sites. Don't feel like you need to be active on Plurk and Reddit and Google+ non-stop, but don't be afraid to try different networks on for size and see what clicks with you. Maybe Plurk's reputation has steered you away from the perfect network for your... or maybe the warnings were all spot on. Only you can really figure that out for yourself.

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[sirhc deSantis]

same plurk?

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/06/second-life-web-profiles-now-with-plurk-integration.html

[Kitty Revolver]

funny I got a good following on my fashion blog on tumblr and flickr without plurk. I very much dislike Plurk even though I used the platform for awhile. Too much drama and just didn't care about what people were posting, that and I never got anyone to comment on my plurks, so it was kinda boring.

My own social media habits that dive into personal stuff usually are more to my friends and my friends only and I am interested in the lives of only so many people and plurk just kinda expanded my network to too many people. I am a heavy facebook user and those who I share a much closer connection in Second Life I friended their actual personal account. I realize not everyone wants to do that, but the friends I established in Second Life have become friends in real life.

[Ever Afterr]

Thank you so much for taking the time to follow up on my comment, Iris!

In the last few weeks that I've started to immerse myself in SL social media, I've found that Reddit is like the perfect marriage of a small, intimate forum and a moderate blog feed. Flickr is full of phenomenal photographers and it's really proven to be a fantastic place to find new blogs to follow and places to explore (ALWAYS appreciate it when people put SLURLs or locations in their descriptions!) And exactly as you said, Iris, Twitter is indeed shaping up as more of a one-sided broadcasting platform, but I think much of that depends upon who you follow, and whether those people opt to use it for chatting in addition to sending re-plurks or blog links.

So while they all have their merits, Plurk really does sound like the ideal social platform for bloggers and I appreciate your thoughts on it! Will definitely give it a closer look, and your tips on how to use it and find people to engage with are really helpful. :)