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Plinky is a new service which aims to ‘help you create inspired content on the web’ by prompting you with questions and topics each day – e.g. ‘Which wild animal would you have as a pet’, or ‘Which three songs would you have on your roadtrip tape’.

It’s got some pedigree, with CEO and founder Jason Shellen formerly of Pyra Labs (which developed Blogger), formerly Product Manager of Google Reader, and also VP of Product Development at LiveJournal.

Not only does he know his stuff, but his name has meant favourable coverage on ReadWriteWeb, Scobleizer (including a video demo), Louis Gray and Venturebeat.

I think Louis made a good point that it isn’t a tool for early adopters as much as it is for people who might not have updated their blog for a month due to a lack of inspiration.

But still…

I’m on there. I quite like the idea. I’ve discovered that one of my best friends loves a song I’d never have predicted in a million years. I’ve written about the most bizarre animal I’d like to own. And I like the ability for my answer to be posted to my blog.

But I think my favourite query for any new service is going to be a stumbling block.

Relevancy.

So far, there’s only 9 prompts (I believe one is posted daily), and I realise I’ve got a pretty specific focus on my blogs – microblogging on one, social media marketing/digital publishing on another, and my Nissan on a third, rarely updated Blogger site.

But even on a general lifestyle blog, I’m not sure it wouldn’t look completely random to answer more than one or two prompts from the limited selection of 9 so far.

And I’m not sure it’s more informative yet than looking at a Facebook profile etc.

I think there is a space for an inspiration tool like this – but I suspect the number of prompts needs to increase pretty quickly, and perhaps be categorised by topic to make more sense for many people.

It wouldn’t be hard, for example, to use Plinky once a week to create a post from a selection of prompts on whatever your focus might be e.g. all sport prompts, or all music prompts.

Add that relevancy, and the ability to easily schedule posts for a certain day – e.g. a regular ‘Plinky’ Friday post, and I’d be more convinced of the ability to scale and grow. It would not only become a useful tool for inspiration, but also a way to minimise blog guilt and missing days/weeks of posting due to other pressures.

And even for those of us who try to get one or two days ahead at the weekend, having Plinky inspiration could be a great way to get some ideas out without my usual Google Reader marathon session on a Sunday!