Michael Schneider has written a post on his Digital Before Digital blog about the launch of Plurk: the new “Twitter-like” service recently launched. In it, Schneider writes:

Plurk has had the benefit of watching twitter flop around like a fish on the beach, but twitter has a big head start. Plurk’s user interface is a lot different. Twitter’s advantage is that most of its users are already longtime instant messenger users and bloggers who understand the technology and have easily adopted and embraced its value proposition. Because Plurk takes a few times to get used to, it puts it at a huge disadvantage in a space where people will give you about 90 seconds before they decide if they want to pursue something– unless they get some of the Twitter elite to convert people.

Certainly Plurk has gained some good press as a service that does things a little better than Twitter (stability issues not withstanding). But how much room do people have for another social network service? And will adoption from key Twitterers be the key to Plurk’s success? What do you think?

You can read Michael’s full post here.

In response to the recent news of The Sharper Image facing bankruptcy and therefore not honoring Sharper Image gift cards, their main competitor, Brookstone, has seized the opportunity.

Brookstone is honoring those Sharper Image gift cards by giving customers 25% off all items. No one likes to see a company go down. Who am I kidding? No one likes to see a company down more than a competitor. The important thing is to not get caught just watching the downfall as a spectator. There are customers to acquire and those customers are ripe for the picking.

In the case of Brookstone and The Sharper Image, customers thought the unused gift cards were barely worth the plastic they were printed on. By giving a blanket savings for those customers, Brookstone, which sells similar items and caters to the same audience acquired them for a fraction of the normal cost of acquisition. Read more…

Here’s a hint: when you hire people to pass out free samples, don’t require them to put them together on-site.

This morning, as I walked out of the train station on my way to work, I was stopped by a drug dealer who asked me if I wanted pot. The problem was he wasn’t a drug dealer nor was he handing out pot. He was hired to give out samples and he was giving out tea. But I never would have known it considering he had no clothing or nametag that would clue me into the fact that he was passing out samples and as he was talking to people, he was stuffing the tea bags into these little sample boxes.

If you want people to try out your product, make sure it appears to be given out by someone who is supposed to give out samples and have the samples pre-assembled!

The tea is from Revolution Tea and although the packaging makes it look legit, seeing a random tea bag stuffed into a box on the street is enough to make anyone worry.