With as many social networks that are popping up on almost a daily basis, how do these sites get us to stick around? We’re aware of the many benefits from the networks we frequent; APIs/apps, website traffic, conversations, networking - the list goes on. But how do newcomers grab a hold of a piece of the social networking pie?
For the up and coming site that has made the biggest splash as of late, Plurk seems to utilize Karma as one of their main features (and incentives). Users receive Karma for numerous actions taken on the site, which include adding friends, plurking consistently throughout the day and getting responses to plurks. On the other hand, you can also lose Karma due to spamming too many plurks, getting a friend request rejected and getting unfriended by a user. As the Plurk learning curve has slowly died down and the community has evolved, people are quickly learning the pros and cons of Karma.
With the specific guidelines above, it seems quite easy for users to ‘game’ the system to increase their Karma and get the incentives of smileys and high rankings. Where I see the major downfall is in the content. I see numerous plurks a day about people complaining that their Karma went down and that they need to bring it back up. There have also been several discussions on whether people Plurk just for Karma. I understand that the premise of Plurk is about having fun but Karma brings a sense of forced interaction and ultimately, a form of bribery that diminishes the value of its content.
I’m by no means bashing Plurk as I feel it is a very interesting network with many benefits but there’s too much of an emphasis on Karma. How far can they really take it? Offer more incentives? More user features? It’ll be interesting to see how they’ll continue to use Karma after the smileys. Regardless of what will be offered, it just gives users more incentive to figure out how to increase their Karma to reach those ‘goals’.
I don’t really care for it. I was happy that extra stuff came with my karma, but don’t really care about it. Especially with an algorithm that’s not set up like I think it should be. It’s too punitive for things that I think should not be punitive. And it shouldn’t go down if you’re gone for a few days. That’s nuts.
If they made it better, maybe I’d change my mind, but until they do I’m over it.
Plurk rewards users that bring a lot of new users to Plurk by increasing their rating. Plurk also rewards users that traffic the site each day without being obnoxious. Plurk rewards those who add value to Plurk, which, honestly, is all that Plurk really cares about. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about that.
It’s a game; but really all depends how you want to utilize it and if you wanna play or not. Either way, enjoy.
Yah, I don’t get the whole karma thing. To me, it’s a method to strongarm you into using the site on mostly Plurk’s terms. Which, since it is free and I appreciate the UI, I oblige.