If you haven't tried Plurk, you should. Its like Twitter, only messier. In fact, with only 13 friends since I started a day ago, it's getting a bit too much to track all the plurks and replies to plurks. I discovered by accident an easier way to manage Plurk making it more Twitter-like. Plurk has a mobile interface at http://www.plurk.com/m/ where it lists all plurks in a Twitter-like form. Although it's created for the mobile browser, you can open it in Firefox or your favourite web browser too. But I found that the best way to use it was to place it in the sidebar. I use Firefox and this is how you do it:

• Go to http://www.plurk.com/m/
• Click Bookmarks > Bookmark This Page...
• Save the bookmark where you like and name it as you see fit
• Click Bookmarks > Organise Bookmarks...
• Right-click on your Plurk bookmark
• Click Properties
• Check Load this bookmark in the sidebar
• Click OK

Now click the bookmark and you should see it open in a sidebar like this: Now it's more widget/app like and you don't have to keep a whole tab open for it. I'm sure it works in other browsers' sidebars too, but here's the Firefox way.