Twitter‘s architectural problems are well known. Many of us in the social networking scene have never been so focused on what’s under the hood of a particular service. While I do have a great deal of performance testing and tuning experience, I have never seen it pushed so hard in the social web.

Not to my surprise, a new Twitter competitor arose recently called Kwippy, and they came out swinging. This blog post by Kwippy highlights their architecture and it focuses on why they will not succumb to fail-whale syndrome:

Today in the world of micro-blogging, problems of twitter have become nearly household news. This has made site developers think about how can they make their site stable and scale with good Quality of service to the user (you , me , everyone). This post is about how we have planned kwippy, the whys and how we ensure that kwippy, the whale does not beach.

Yes, you read that correctly. They referenced the whale. At any rate, Kwippy is a micro/nanoblogging platform which reminds me of Pownce, Jaiku, and Plurk but with minor differences:

• It does not have a (140) character limit
• It does not offer rich media embedding (pictures, video, music)
• It notifies you of new subscriptions via IM
• It does offer commenting on “kwips” that are posted, but users can “subscribe” to these threads giving them a convenient means of “keeping up”.
• It does not have mobile features (SMS, iPhone/mobile/wap webpage)

Some of these differences may not be as bad as they seem. For example, the lack of a character limitation propels Kwippy in the realm of Tumblr and Posterous tumblelogs. Without rich media embeds or text formatting, however, it kind of falls flat on its face. I have submitted feedback to the authors regarding some shortcomings that I’ve seen and they seem very responsive. That’s always a plus. Here’s a walkthrough:

The biggest flaw that I can find with Kwippy is the look and feel of the website. It needs a CSS makeover ASAP. This issue is not a critical one as its in private beta and also a very young application. The look and feel of the website is more easily addressable than say the database architecture. If they address this before going live, I can see this as a decent contender. The feature-set is fairly weak, but with so much focus on a stable architecture, one can’t help but hope for the best for Kwippy. Keep your eye on this one.

You can find me on Kwippy at http://www.kwippy.com/bwana.

No related posts.

When a new Twitter clone emerges in an already crowded space, it is easy to denounce it as just another wanna-be and classify it as a failure. No one knew Twitter would take the internet by storm, competitors such as Jaiku and Pownce are still thriving today, but they are nowhere near the size Twitter is.

Enter Plurk. Plurk? Are you kidding me? What kind of a name is Plurk?

Noun. plurk (plüer-kh) – A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life in deliciously digestible chunks. Low in fat, 5 calories per serving, yet chock full of goodness.

Verb. plurk (plüer-kh) – To chronicle the events of your always on, action-packed, storybook, semi-charmed kinda life.

Well, that clears things up.

Anyway, Plurk is a relatively new service which emulates Twitter’s notion of short status updates. Plurk is centered around the notion of “Karma”, which is a point-reward system for participating in discussions and using the service. The interface on the web site mimics a river of moving information. The bottom axis is the time of day and the updates travel along it. There is emphasis on specific verbs such as “is, thinks, shares”. At first glance, it’s a horrible representation of status updates. Twitter has taught us that updates in 140 characters or less should always be displayed in a vertical, tabular format. Just look at all the bashing going on at Twitter, it’s not easy to read coming from that world. Plurk aims to thrash this mindset and present the data in a new fashion. A daunting task, indeed.

Let’s talk about more of the features:

I’ve provided a video walkthrough of some of Plurk’s features including the mobile interface:

I’ve used Plurk for almost a week (karma 38.07 at the time of this post), and I’ve found some of it’s initial shortcomings are not as huge as some make it out to be. Some obvious areas of improvement include:

So what’s the big deal with Plurk?

I believe Plurk is a strong candidate as a Twitter replacement for many people. Hear me out. Plurk encourages use of its system with Karma. The more Karma you accumulate, the more features you obtain. (currently only emoticons and profile features, but this can easily be extended). In an age where kids buy crappy Xbox 360 games simply to increase their gamerscore and unlock achievements, this is a huge advantage. Sure, it’s not for everyone, but there are a lot of potential users who would be addicted to Plurk not for the utility, but for the fun. I mean, who doesn’t like statistics? Think about why Jaiku and Pownce are lacking users. (Most) People stopped using them because everyone was on Twitter. There was little reason to go back if your friends were on Twitter. Plurk gives the user an incentive to return and to keep Plurking. That’s powerful.

I know there are many early adopters who believe Karma is stupid and don’t understand the appeal, but how many of those same brilliant minds could grasp the appeal of Twitter during it’s inception? Not many.

I can safely say that Plurk has grown on me. While I don’t see it as an immediate Twitter killer at the moment, I do see a great deal of momentum forming with Twitter’s issues. A wise man said: “The longer Twitter has issues and prohibits the user from using it, the more likely the user is going to forget why they fell in love with it in the first place“. The clock is definitely ticking. Twitter’s uptime has become the exception and not the norm. I do understand that the website is generally up, but for many, Twitter’s advantage to other services come from IM/Jabber and tracking capabilities, which are currently down. The API is also in a crippled state.

If you find Plurk interesting, come on by and sign up. Using this link will increase my karma (lol), and also automatically add me to your friends list. (Hey, at least I’m honest ) Once you get started, here are some resources that may interest you:

Short summary: There’s much more to Plurk that meets the eye.

Related posts:

• My Twitter-Fu is Better Than Yours
• Kwippy Offers Stability First
• 10 Days Without Twitter