Short Review: Plag

Plag is a free mobile application that has been developed for iOS and Android platforms. In more conventional social media platforms, spreading ideas first starts with building your audience by adding people to your social network. The more friends you have, more you are able make yourself heard. Plag challenges this common concept by unifying virtual and physical world within a mobile platform. It achieves this by using “geo-fencing” technology. In Plag, every user is connected with each other the moment they start using the application, which is the main social network. Inside this main network, there are micro-networks such as school campuses, neighborhoods etc. And this is where things get interesting, by design a user is only able to share something within the micro-network he or she is currently located in. If the other users find it interesting, they may also choose to share (spread) it with their network and so on. And this is what makes physical world conditions an important factor. A message that has been originally shared in Berlin, Germany might pop up later in Istanbul, Turkey because of a user who traveled between two countries and chose to spread the message. It certainly seems like a novel idea. Even though Plag is newer and has a smaller userbase compared to its competitors, it might bring a new breath of fresh air to social media in time. According to their website, 59% of their userbase is European, USA follows by 26% and lastly Asia by 10%. They are also working on development of desktop and Windows mobile versions.