Earlier this month, Plurk was discovered and has had social media addicts abuzz with the “new Twitter clone,” especially as a result of Twitter downtime.

After using both closely, the comparison to Twitter shouldn’t even be the case. Plurk and Twitter are two entirely different beasts. Personally, I don’t even see the need to compare the two at all. The only similarity is a 140 character limit for posts — so Plurk is essentially a microblogging platform. But Plurk is a lot more, and Twitter still has its place.

Plurk: Real Nested Conversations Brought to the Microblogging Platform

A few days ago, I noticed via Twitter search tool Summize that Aaron Brazell had been talking about me on his Twitter stream. Normally, when I catch onto such a discussion, I navigate to the person’s particular Tweet and try to find the context of the message. In Aaron’s case, it was a lengthy dialogue with another Twitter user that I couldn’t exactly figure out, so I direct messaged him for clarification. There was no easy way for me to follow the conversation easily, and as much as I tried to read and understand everything in the Twitter timeline, I couldn’t understand the ongoing discussion. Even Quotably didn’t prove to be much help.

This is a guest post from Samir Balwani of Internet Marketing blog Left the Box.com.

It feels like every day there’s a new post about Plurk, Twitter, or some new micro-blogging platform. They’re always heralded as the next big social media hit, the best on the web, or something killer.

The truth is, they’re not.

Most of these platforms are too young to be killing anything, and are generally unfinished. Twitter has major problems with uptimes, Plurk is missing some major features, and Brightkite is having issues with Verizon.

My biggest problem with all these platforms is that they’re based on the same general idea, to update people on your location, latest thoughts, or what you’re doing. But they all shy away from implementing features that worked, from other services.

That’s why I’m announcing Plutter Kite, the official roadmap for the best micro-blogging platform. Here’s a feature’s list, broken down by features that each service already contains:

Plurk:
Karma - an awesome feature that keeps people engaged, and gives users a goal. It’s something to work towards, and opens up other options.