Plinky

Automattic is happy to announce that we’ve added Plinky.com to our family of services.

Each weekday, Plinky provides a prompt — like a question or a challenge — and you type in an answer. To keep it interesting, prompts are a mixed bag of fun commands (“Write a haiku about the last meal you ate”) to more thoughtful questions (“What is your favorite summer memory?”)

For more information on Plinky and how to use it on your WordPress blog, see: Overcome Writer’s Block With Plinky.

We’re delighted to be featured in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. Columnist Rob Walker, author of the book “Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are,” spoke with Jason recently and wrote up a nice piece explaining the goal and appeal of Plinky.

The only thing…technology cannot do is solve this problem: What if you don’t really have anything to express?

Ah, but technology can solve that problem for you. Plinky.com, which officially went online in January, exists specifically to offer what it calls prompts, meant to inspire interesting thoughts to share with the world.

If you’re new to the site, welcome, and be sure to page through our prompts to answer some of the fun ones Rob mentioned (and many more). You can also follow @plinky and @plinkyprompts on Twitter.

The first time I heard of Josh. A Cagan was his brilliant “Letter From Hollywood” he wrote for The Morning News during the Hollywood writers’ strike of 2007. I forgot about Josh until he joined Twitter and started dropping hilarious one-liners and eventually headline-inspired punchlines. When he opened up “Punchline Friday” as a user contest, I thought I’d participate and offered up my own entry. I won that first contest, possibly due to a lack of other entrants. Josh followed up to get my address so he could send my prize. I thought the whole thing was a joke, but sent him my address anyway.

The next week, I got a delivery addressed from “American Science & Surplus.” I opened the package (a reused McDonald’s coffee cup box) to find a box full of a random assortment of bizarre consumer goods and toys including glow-in-the-dark temporary snake and lizard tattoos, a jumbo key holder (shaped like a key, naturally), a fanny pack, and a 9-piece wood turkey decoration set. Surprise! I knew right then and there that I’d made a very special new Internet friend.

When we launched Plinky, Josh joined and started writing some of the best answers we’d seen. So it’s our pleasure to present the week of Cagan from today through Sunday, during which you’ll be delighted, challenged, repulsed, and more by Josh’s fantastic prompts. Enjoy.