Plurk, a fancier version of (and competitor to) Twitter has discovered that they are being blocked by the great firewall of China. Plurk's lead developer, Amir Salihefendic, says that they have no clue why they are being targeted, have received no warnings from the Chinese government, and are not in contact with them.

Plurk grew quickly in popularity during the last year as Twitter suffered problem after problem after problem. While the site never managed to catch the publicity of Twitter, it does have a number of hard core fans and has become extremely popular in Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

While similar in concept to Twitter, Plurk varies drastically in that messages appear on a horizontal timeline and replies are actually viewable from the original message allowing for what many feel gives the site a more community feel.