Resurgent ex-Twitter rival Plurk gets Series A funding from WI Harper

Plurk, like Friendster, is a forgotten player in the long-drawn social network wars. But it has earned a resurgence of sorts lately, getting 1M daily active users and passing 8 billion ‘Plurks’, or status updates. While far from its peak of 100M visits a month, it still shows a lot of promise.

By demonstrating its potential for a second act, the Taiwan-headquartered Plurk has received a Series A round from WI Harper Group, which typically invests more than USD 5M in healthcare and technology companies. But according to TheNextWeb, the deal is in the seven digit range but no more than USD5M. Plurk made the announcement in a press release today.

The social network has kept itself alive by appealing to Asian users. Now, 60 percent of its traffic come from Taiwan, while Indonesians are registering strong interest for the site too. Plurk is getting strong growth from Japan and India, with Philippines becoming another one of its bigger markets. To better serve its userbase, it has decided to recently move to Taiwan to get closer to these countries.

According to Alvin Woon, founder of Plurk, its average users are females aged 16-28. They have the following interests: cos-player, knitter, Second Lifer, and like cheesecake, he told TNW.

The social network, around since 2008, is essentially a more visual and private version of Twitter. Users can see their Plurks and those of their friends displayed in a horizontal timeline. It also just announced the launch of anonymous posting, which orientates the site towards being content-focused instead of simply trying to build a social graph.

The fresh investment will give the company the opportunity to grow its team of less than 6 people. They’ll also have the chance to explore new revenue models beyond simple Google Adsense, which now generate the bulk of their income.

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