the(new)mediaslut

Andrew, of APLink, is pissed that Ping.sg has taken out his client’s Hypercol blog because it was deemed as a commercial blog by Uzyn, the creator of Ping.sg.

Wrote Andrew,

Whilst I am U-Zyn’s friend this email is just ridiculous when companies like nuffnang, advertlets & blog2u have used his portal to make huge amounts of money from advertisers like nike ….on bloggers sites (isn’t this commercial). This only makes me think that ping has double standards -

Uzyn has countered and wrote,

We at Ping.sg have noticed that there have been an increasing number of commercial sites misusing the bloggers’ platform for their commercial purposes.

Sticking to our policy that Ping.sg is only for bloggers in the region, we have recently banned tens of sites, linking to commercial entities, from further using Ping.sg services.

Uzyn’s earlier post was a job advertisement looking for an intern.

Unless the role of the intern is to be his personal assistant, Uzyn’s intention to hire an intern has to be for commercial reasons too.

Going by Ping.sg’s definition of what commercial blogs, did Uzyn misused the bloggers’ platform for his own commercial purposes too?

Be An Intern At Ping.sg! « Ping.sg Blog via kwout

This argument of commercial blogging isn’t new. Back in 2005, a blogger at Techrepublic also raised the question asking what constitute a commercial blog and when does that blog cross that line.

Wrote Jay Garmon,

Of course, every silver lining has a potential cloud, and we’re already starting to trip over potential problems. Specifically, what happens if somebody uses their blog as a “free advertising” platform for their business. Setting aside the potential legal implications, would members find this offensive? Personally, I’m of the mind that members can blog about anything that isn’t illegal or blatantly offensive, but I’ve seen plenty of discussion threads that have been used to plug a Web site or a business, and the community’s response to these posts has almost invariably been pretty negative.

Should Ping.sg ban commercial blogs? That’s Uzyn’s call.

However, my suggestion for Ping.sg is to let the community decide. At the end of the day, that’s what web2.0 is about. The creator gives out the tool, creates a community and let the community decide.

If Uzyn decide to play the role of gatekeeper, then the web2.0 has taken two steps back and have gone back to the media0.5 generation.

Commercial blogs usually don’t get the Pongs and are usually ignored.

Even if a post becomes abusive and racial, Uzyn has also set in place tools to prevent such posts from getting ponged or from appearing in Ping.sg.

I wonder, as much as the Web2.0 generation preached about the Web2.0 culture of the down-up approach, why is it I keep seeing the return of the top down control they try to put in place?