Or at least the first one based in the Philippines? If you don’t know what Plurk is, it’s a Twitter wannabe but apparently cuter and more fun with its innovative timeline presentation of “plurks” and its grouping of responses into threads. (I don’t use Twitter, Pownce, nor Jaiku, so I wouldn’t really know the difference. Yeah, such a boring life I lead.) See Andrew’s post for a view of Plurk from the Twitter perspective.

I learned about Plurk, not from the Twitterverse, but from Todoist, a to-do list web application that I raved about last year. Amir Salihefendic is the developer of Todoist and he was tasked to be the lead developer for Plurk. Development for Todoist slowed down late last year and Amir acknowledged that fact via a the Todoist’s What’s New page:

Todoist development (20. december 2007)

As you may have noticed Todoist development has slowed down. This is mainly because of a new (secret) project that we are doing.

Then late last month, I was greeted with this post:

The return of Todoist :-) (26. may 2008)

As I have written before I have been doing a new project for the past 6 months. This project is called Plurk and it’s a social journal that makes it easy to stay in touch with people.

Actually, Plurk was officially launched about a week earlier than that (see Amir’s post) but I only got to know about it from that Todoist news item. I said then, “Another Twitter?” so I held off signing up until May 31 when I said, “What the heck,” and created my profile and did my first plurk.

Plurk was to have been my “secret find.” A sort of Twitter world where I can do my own micro-blogging away from my usual online social spheres. So, imagine my shock when I checked my GMail last Thursday night and saw alerts that said that Noemi and Juned had added me on Plurk. They were just two of the mass of Twitterers from all over the world that flocked to check out Plurk last week. I didn’t expect people to sort of abandon Twitter knowing that Jaiku and Pownce wasn’t able to capture the market. I guess Plurk is just so fresh that many people took an instant liking to it.

Anyway, I think that I have the distinction of being the first Plurker based in the Philippines. I’d certainly like to know if there are other Filipinos who can boast of having “Member since: May 2008” on their Plurk profile page. Hehehe. Update (March 25, 2009): I am actually the second.

Go check Plurk out and sign up for an account if haven’t done so.