Plurk, Twitter for Teens?

bub.blicio.us asks the question “is Plurk another Twitter?” and in many ways it is, it’s a lifestreaming/microblogging platform with friends and fans etc. The one major difference that I see in Plurk is it’s “Karma” measure, and that is one of the only reasons why I think it will be interesting to watch what happens. Karma is essentially a measure of your level of participation in the Plurk system, and it’s the kind of explicit feedback that I think can fuel the growth of social systems. One of the reasons that Yelp is so successful is it has multiple feedback mechanisms that reward and recognize the right activity in the social network, and therefore encourages more of that activity. If you reward the right “value creating” activities on your social network you set up very powerful virtuous cycles.