the(new)mediaslut

Ping.sg has adopted a “Pay-per-post” approach to get its blog community members to “promote” the current Tiger Airways contest running at the blog aggregation site.

Wrote the eDM from Ping.sg,

Congratulations! You’ve been specially selected for an advertorial opportunity to promote the Ping.sg-Tiger Airways “Share Your Holiday” contest. The winner of the contest will be winning a pair of tickets to any destination that Tiger Airways fly to!This advertorial opportunity is for your blog at http:///xxx.xxx.xx

Your post can be a sharing of your trip to any destination and be submitted for the contest too! Where you may stand a chance to win the pair of return air ticket on Tiger Airways and/or $50 from the weekly draw. You can refer to this blogger’s post for idea. 

… The advertorial piece will earn you SGD xx.xx. Payment will be made within 10 working days after your post has been put up and ping-ed to Ping.sg. In addition, all advertorial and contest entries will also be featured on a microsite on Ping.sg for Tiger Airways contest and being featured on a random selection on Ping.sg homepage and be linked to your blog.

The start of this “Pay-per-post” services means Ping.sg has started to challange the likes of Advertlets and Nuffnang.Advertlets were one of their sponsors at the recent Ping.sg awards.  The last sentence highlights that payment will be made when the post has been pinged. Wait a  minute, isn’t this the type of advertorial post that Ping.sg discourages?

From Ping’s blog on Feb 05 2008,

Poof - you’re gonePoof, also known as flag, is a feature for the Pingsters to flag offensive pings. Currently the flags are,

• • Adult-oriented - Ping.sg should a G-rated and should be a community for all bloggers, there shouldn’t be adult-oriented materials being published on Ping.sg. Of course that’s an ideal case, but now Pingsters who care can help make sure these posts do not get on the ranking board.
  • Advertorial - Ping.sg is a platform for bloggers to share their blog posts, not for companies to advertise their products. I’m sure none of us will not want to see Ping.sg flooded with “$9.99 T-Shirt Just Arrived” or similar titles.
  • Inaccurate titles - You know how bad these pings can get. What is shown at the title isn’t related at all, or only mildly related to what the blogpost is about.
  • No content - There’s no content, only emptiness, or sole link.

And at Ping’s Blog on June 06 2008,

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.This is done solely to ensure that the pings on the platform is still largely consists of posts, views and opinions by the bloggers.