“Cliquing” Around Your Timeline

Cliques! While the name might not be appealing to most, the idea is. Being able to talk to a select few of your friends privately about a topic is a great way to increase communication with your pleeps while maintaining a public image with the rest of the Plurk world. This is one feature that sites like Twitter cannot even fathom implementing because of database issues and other restrictions on the service. The Clique feature is, however, flawed in one major way. I have noticed more and more people complaining about this and I thought it was time to write a post on this topic.

Location, Location, Location

The one main problem with Cliques is the location of them on your timeline. At first I did not see them being mingled in with the private plurks as a big deal, but as my friends list grows I notice more and more every day that it is harder to distinguish the two. I find that a private plurk should be defined as a Plurk between you and one other person, where a Clique should be defined as a group of people and therefore should be seperate. Not only does these two being together in one tab limit ability to find Clique posts you want to respond on quickly, but it also seems to get your private plurks lost in the shuffle. I think that if there were seperate tabs for these it would make the UI navigation much more friendly, and also would allow for easy refrence to private plurks when they come available. This is a feature I recently suggested on Get Satisfactions Plurk Support Page. Go there and support it if you like the idea.

Minor Problem or Possible Bug

So off the topic for a second, it also seems that clique and private plurks only come up in your timeline if there is a response to it already. This can be fustrating, especially with private plurks that you havent responded to (unless the other person who is plurking responds to themselves). I propose that this may be a bug in the system as I do remember them coming up in my timeline before. If this was a removed feature then it is my suggestion that this one is added back as it can make getting your private plurks a whole lot easier, and in turn makes the UI a whole lot more friendly not to mention saving time. If it is a bug I hope that it gets fixed soon for all our sakes.

If you have any bugs you have found, or a suggestion that would improve overall usability of plurk I encourage you to leave a comment below. I will review them and send them on to the Plurk Support Page at Get Satisfaction, or you can head over there yourself and sign up for an account if you wish. Pleae note that if you are the one with the suggestion or bug and you wish for me to pass it on for you I will include your name and respectively give you credit for it. I just hope to give back to the community what I have recieved in the past couple months.

I am Thoughtwrong, and you’ve just been Pleeped!

Filed under: Pleeps