A few weeks ago, I had some problems with iPlurk, an iPhone app for the micro-messaging service Plurk. My main beef with the app was that the third-party developers who made it failed to capture what makes Plurk unique in its field. Well, I’ve got some good news: Plurk itself has come around and released its own iPhone app today.

The app, dubbed simply “Plurk,” bests iPlurk in many ways. In the main timeline view you can now see the service’s trademark verbs (like “hates” used in the title) outlined in their appopriate colors; you can see which messages in your timeline are unread; you can easily browse your contacts; and it even has emoticon hints. But the major advantage of the app is its price: Free versus $1.99 for iPlurk.

Sadly, neither app supports the horizontal timeline view that sets Plurk apart from rivals like Twitter and Identi.ca. Wouldn’t it be cool if you got this standard veritcal stream view when you held your iPhone vertical, but it switched to the horizontal layout when you rotated the device? I think so.

We’re starting to see a trend in Apple’s App Store of third party devolopers rushing to release a product built on a popular service, only to have it bested by the actual service’s app shortly thereafter. It recently happened with Reddit and now Plurk. Unfortunately, many users are spending good money to download the first app before the better one makes it to market.

Hopefully you took my advice and didn’t buy iPlurk. While it was adequate for those addicted to the service, Plurk’s actual app is better and free. Find it here.