Have you heard of Plurk? Well I hadn't, not until very early Sunday morning, when I first saw talk of the micro-blogging site being mentioned on Twitter. Over the course of the day, talk of Plurk spread like wildfire via Twitter, as users jumped over to see what the site was all about.


Many of us tried out Plurk, and came away with mixed results. That's not what impressed me. What impressed me was how quickly the "what is Plurk?" question traveled throughout the hyper-connected Twitter network.
Everyone wanted to check out Plurk, because everyone else was talking about it. And again, most people were tweeting that they didn't really understand what the deal was with Plurk, or what value it had. Didn't matter, as everyone was blabberin' on about Plurk, so everyone had to see what the deal was.
And it was a great example of how quickly ideas can spread, especially through well-connected networks. My guess is that if you weren't on Twitter on Sunday, you probably didn't hear much, if any, talk about Plurk. But if you were on Twitter, it seemed to be all anyone was talking about.
Then again, perhaps the most interesting aspect was that by day's end, many people were spreading an idea simply because everyone else was. Many people have lamented about the 'echo chamber' that exists in the blogosphere, and how we early adopters of social media sites/tools tend to over-hype any new sites or tools that pop up. It appears that was definitely a factor in driving everyone to Plurk.com.
Still, any business that wants to integrate social media into its business processes, needs to understand how easily ideas, and hype around those ideas, can spread in this space.