I’m connected to the local blog aggregator over at ping.sg and it’s interesting(although sometimes irritating) to see how posts gets ponged all the way to infamy.

For the uninitiated, blogs ‘ping’ the site and have their entries listed in the main page. Then as users click to view the entry, the site regards each click as a vote to indicate the user’s interest in the entry…that vote is called a ‘pong’. While there flaws in that logic, it was initially designed to be a system that’s favourable in such a passive state like ours. No one gives a shit about clicking a thumbs up or down…a digg-like system would almost certainly fail.

Anyhow, it’s a friday afternoon and I’m finding all sorts of reasons to not do work so I’ve decided to post a short piece on the factors affecting how you climb the cor-pong-arate ladder.

1. What time do you post your entry?
Now this has a tremendous effect. Imagine if you post at 3.30am with almost no one online but with a steady stream of other pings coming in every half hour or so. By the time the crowd and the lurker community comes in full force, you’ll find you ping on the next page. Who’s going to see it?

Contrast this with if you ping around lunch time, or just before knockoff time, you’ll get a sizeable number of pings to get you going. If other conditions are right, you’ll get a 10th placing and you’ll be well on your way to infamy.

2. Do you market your ping.sg URL?
Now this is somewhat debatable. The founder of ping.sg had mentioned before that the system wasn’t about tracking approval ratings of the entry. So what some users have done is to put their ping.sg post url onto the MSN nicks, forums, emails and all sorts of mediums. It’s crazy if when you see a post thats only a few hours old and they’ve got hundreds of pongs.

I don’t like people who do this…especially when they do it all the way to no….though I admit, i’ve done it to get to #10.

3. Don’t cheat our feelings
I know of internet marketers who use ping.sg. Unfortunately, I think the novelty of their suggestive titles have begun working against them. From my interaction with other users, a lot of people stop clicking the entry by virtue of who’s posting it. So if you want long-term pongs…don’t cheat people of their feelings.

4. Content: Is it controversial?
This plays on people’s ego. Giving an alternative perspective about why you think Singaporeans are lazy sheep would definitely make you want to know if you fit into that writer’s argument right? How about taking it closer to home and write about why ping.sg are actually loners who can’t get a life outside of the geek-zone?

5. Sleazy Titles please
This beats all the rest hands down. I even want to go so far as to say nothing else matters except this. Put up an entry with sexual connotations and you only need to worry about other sex-crazed pings. Be careful not to just put sexy titles just to get clicks though lest you break rule #3. Ensure that it’s coupled with sexy, raunchy pictures..or better still. Videos.

That’s it!
Do add your own analysis of what makes it possible to pong your way to infamy.

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