Collectible Waste

By now, you've probably had a chance to play around with Plurk and see how much fun it is to put all the tiny things that make up your life on your own timeline and share it with your friends and family.   Of course, being able to easily share all this information with other people means it is important that you are careful about the things you choose to share with others on Plurk and the people who can see these things.  To make your plurking experience as safe and productive as possible, here are 10 general rules we think you should follow:

1. Only add REAL friends to your friends list -  We can't stress this enough.  If you don't really know someone in real life, you should NOT add them to your friends list or be sharing your lifestream with them. 

2. Limit your friends list to your closest buddies - Quality over quantity. Just because you met someone for 3 minutes at a party doesn't mean you should add them as a buddy on Plurk. It's important that the things you share on Plurk are shared with people you know well and are comfortable sharing information with. Try to keep your friends list to less than 200 people.  Plurk shouldn't be an arms race about how many friends you have.

3. Keep your privacy settings restricted - By default, Plurk ensures that only you and your friends are able to see your plurks. While you have the option of sharing your plurks with friends of friends (FOF) or the whole world, we recommend you only use these settings if you are over 18 and understand the risks that come with sharing your lifestream with people you may not know.

4. Try not to plurk more than 30 times a day - It's annoying. Your friends will start to hate you and probably stop following your plurks.  Nobody likes a chatterbox who babbles about every little thing they do. Limit your plurks to the more important or interesting things that happened throughout the day. 

5. Don't share personal information in your plurks - Resist the temptation to share personal information, cell phone numbers, addresses or any other information in your plurks that you don't want your friends (or even strangers) to know or find out.  If you're going on vacation for an extended period of time, be careful who you share this with.

6. Make good use of cliques and individual plurk privacy options - Sometimes you will find you want to plurk something ONLY to specific friends on your buddy list. If you're in a band, you might plurk something only with your bandmates.  If you're on a soccer team, you might just want to send a plurk to only friends who are on your team.   Make good use of buddy clique and advanced plurk settings to get your plurks to the people who ought to see them.

7. Don't make your plurks too long - You're limited to 140 characters per plurk.  Plurk is meant to be a good way to share small messages with the people around you.  If you must write something longer, find another outlet.

8. Use the response feature properly - Don't create a new plurk to respond to an old plurk. If a buddy is going out to watch a movie tonight and tells all his friends and you want to join him, add a response to his original plurk.  Don't unnecessarily add new plurks when they are related to another plurk.  You'll help keep your timeline and dialogues more organized this way.

9. Be careful what you say about other people in your plurks - Remember, by default, your plurks go out to ALL your friends.  Try to refrain from spamming, spreading rumours or saying offensive and hurtful things about people.  Keep your plurk experience positive and use plurk to share things you're comfortable in sharing with those around you. 

10. Keep it fun  :)