Plurk vs. Twitter

It was said that Plurk was once a rival of Twitter when microblogging platforms take its presence few years back. And to be honest, I am not a fan of Twitter myself because I find Plurk to be more user-friendly and more dynamic than Twitter. Here's an article showing the basic feature and interface of Plurk:
http://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/01/28/plurk-investment-deal/

I acknowledge the fact that whether one likes Plurk or Twitter is more of a personal taste and it depends heavily on the social community you hangout with. In my case, I love Japanese manga/anime style arts and I draw those kinds of arts myself.  I know that Plurk is a very popular social media in my country Taiwan, especially among social community of the artists who, like myself, produces Japanese anime/manga style arts (whether original art or fan art) or writers who wrote fan-novels. On the other hand, Twitter is the dominating platform for everyone, not only the artists or writers, but everyone. However I still don't find Twitter to be as easy to use for few reasons:

1. Twitter's 140 words limitation is simply NOT ENOUGH, especially when you write in English. On the other hand, Plurk does have limitations too but not as few as 140.

2. Twitter does not allow you to post your own "emoticons" to express your feeling along with the words you wrote. In contrast, you can upload your own image (50x50 pixel image in gif/jpg/png/etc formats) to your profile and you can use them the way you like on all the Plurk posts and replies and it really help convey your feelings effectively!

3. Plurk has a much friendly user-interface than Twitter. Twitter is crowded with words and too little picture. It is sometimes hard to follow when a webpage is crammed with too many words!

4. Both Twitter and Plurk allows "reblogging"; however, Plurk has more staying power as compared to Twitter. You can form a chat dialogue with other users and you can track them easily.

I can go on and on and even take screenshots of Plurk's user interface to introduce all the feature to show why it's better than Twitter!  According the blog post I posted above, Plurk's biggest market is in Taiwan and Indonesia. I'd say Plurk is somewhat a mix of Twitter, Facebook timeline, and Tumblr. With all the features combined from different social media platforms, I really don't see why they cannot expand to other countries because it certainly has a lot of potential!