A new microblogging service, Plurk, is getting some attention among Twitter fans.  The user interface is more colorful and, some argue, user-friendly.

Some Twitterers, fed-up with recent down-time, are hopeful that Plurk could provide a more reliable and flexible alternative. Other Twitterers are loyal to the original service and simple concept, warts n' all.

So which service will win? The jury's out.

This is a prediction that Plurk will not out-grow Twitter in terms of user recruitment and adoption. To measure the performance, note that according to compete.com, Twitter's web Visits went from about 100K to 3 million from June 07 to Dec 07. Therefore to out-compete Twitter, Plurk's monthly web visits will have to exceed that growth rate, i.e., go from where it is now (also about 100K) to reach more than 3 million by Dec. 31, 2008.

Another metric is the People Count measured by compete.com. For Twitter, this went from about 180K to 550K from June to December 07. In order to be judged favorably (i.e., Plurk does fail to outcompete Twitter), both scores for Plurk by the end of Dec 08 will have to be significantly less than both scores for Twitter in Dec 07 (Twitter's scores in Dec 07: Visits = 3,003,976; People Count = 520,380). If they are within 1 percent, the prediction will be judged to have not been met (i.e, Plurk has succeeded in competing with Twitter).  The margin of error is to account for potential inaccuracy in visitor statistics,  N.B. a minor decline in Plurk's stats in May 2008 does not necessarily presage a permanent decline for Plurk, and should not lead to a premature assumption that Plurk will fail to outcompete Twitter.  Twitter suffered a negative 7% growth in People Count in Sep 07 and again in Nov 07.

This prediction will be judged after the end of December, 2008, or earlier if the main Twitter statistics are broken according to compete.com