It's not something I've really been aiming for. I personally try very hard to keep karma out of my decisions when it comes to plurking, karma is not a goal, it is a result of "having fun" on this site.
I'm acelessthan3 and this is my plurk story:
It's hard for me to believe that just over a year ago (432 days ago to be exact) I signed up for an account with this funny little side-scrolling social-networking site through an English class at my college.
"Plurkers of the World, Unite! 15%
This component is very much like attendance or participation. However since our class has a different focus I wanted to do something experimental. Each of you will set up a Plurk page where you will post several short (140 characters) messages throughout each week of the quarter. This way if you are in class or out of class and want to bring something to our attention you can Plurk everyone. We all have laptops and phones so this is a way in which we will all be connected like a large Superorganism."
I signed up for my account sometime after midnight the day before the first day of class: April 1, 2009.
My first update wasn't until the morning though: "acelessthan3 hates that he is currently unable to upload his spring break videos to YouTube." I've since been around to Mark All as Read thousands of updates in addition to the thousands I've read and responded to.
One of the first things out of Nanotext's mouth was "This class is not a joke."
There were about thirty of us in that class and five plurkers from the previous quarter's nanotexts session, but what was more interesting was the retention, the people who kept using their plurk accounts even after the class ended.
It helped us keep in touch over the summer and many of us became close friends. When Nerbiotxiste and I found out we had a different class together in the fall, we used plurk to communicate about the assigned readings and assignments.
Things really changed though when I took another class with Nanotext in the winter, this one called Parasites. Here, plurk became something different for us. There was an overlap of timelines because many of us had accounts already, but the majority didn't and so those of us who knew our way around the plurk-o-sphere found ourselves in this position of explaining and mentoring (or at least leading by example) our peers.
Over time, our conversation on plurk for this parasites class evolved. Nanotext for all intents and purposes deactivated his account halfway through the quarter in favor of a quieter, more private, secondary account. Leaderless, or at least left to our own devices, we turned this micro-blogging social network into something more resembling a community.
We have a tribe of sorts that's slowly growing and for most of us takes up (for college students) even more of our time, interest and energy than does Facebook.
Along the way, I've met a ton of interesting people from near and far. There are plurkers on my timeline from Texas and Pennsylvania, I have followers from Taiwan and the Philippines, but the ones who really matter to me are the plurkers closer to home, the ones who have become good friends.
They're my plurkies and I don't know if my life would be quite the same without them. I'm guaranteed to find an interesting link or image or lolcat or conversation going at pretty much any time of day. It was through our mixed interactions on plurk and in class that I really got to know Jack_Hatter and I'm going to be living with him next year, it's the kind of dynamic I would have never dreamed possible a year ago.
Plurk has become my social network of choice because I've put my life on the line. So thanks, plurk, for making this possible.
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