Is Plurk more popular than Twitter?
I read an interesting article that blog about a report by Hitwise which suggest that Plurk is more popular than Twitter in Singapore.
Personally I am not too sure that is really the case. One factor pointed out was that Twitter has more tools that enable users to update without visiting the site. Even if that wasn't the case and there is indeed more visits to Plurk, I am do not think that number of visits implies that Plurk is more popular.
Hitwise is a competitive intelligence tool which perform ISP based data capture. It works with various ISPs to collect web traffic on different sites. This provides great breadth and may not give the same amount of details as what you could get from analytics reports from individual sites. I might be wrong but I would think that it is measuring only visits but not unique visits.
This would mean that it could be Plurk has a smaller base of users and these users visit the site more often. This could be the likely scenario since Plurk is more engaging in the sense that instead of just updating your status, there are various conversations going on which users can take part in.
I would think that Plurk is more engaging but not necessary more popular (I am using number of users as a metric to measure popularity) from this perspective.
One model that I thought could be interesting in understanding the difference in the usage of Twitter and Plurk in different regions is the Geert Hofstede™ Cultural Dimensions.
Would a higher IDV score indicate that the more expressive nature of Twitter would be more relevant while a lower IDV score indicates that some thing more conversational like Plurk would be more relevant in these regions?
Hmm would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between IDV and the type of social tools that are popular.
What are your thoughts?
