Project Petaling Street (PPS) was but a blogtal (blog-ping-portal) when it first started and recently with huge media coverage along with appearances of blogger faces and the recent PPS bash, it’s now about to take a step further into the local blogosphere. One of the PPS pioneers, Aizuddin who runs Volume of Interactions just proposed a blog for PPS itself.
The blog will contain local flavors such as:
- Politics/Economics
- Social/Arts/Party
- What’s In Your Inbox?
- Makan-Makan
- Blog about Blogging
- A Malaysian’s World Perspective
Other than a huge traffic gain, official PPS bloggers..
..will share revenue gained from ads and make PPS a more interesting place of visit. Now, before you all bounce with joy and enthusiasm I’d like to state the most important requirement from the PPS Blog Wiki:
3–5 postings a week (this is a very important item — a firm commitment is required here)
Therefore, if you don’t think you can handle this responsibility and prefer blogging at your own pace then better not signup. The other rather harsh requirement I found if you choose to be a PPS blogger is this:
Should be unique content, not cut and paste from elsewhere, or from your personal blog.
To my understanding, all the great stuff you might want to blog about would be put on PPS and not on your own blog. I think posting the same post should be allowed. Just that maybe you’re not allowed to link back the continuous article back to your own blog.
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. But seriously, how does the blog add more value to the PPS website? I agree with Minishorts that the content is quite a lot. I’m also pondering what if the PPS blogger loses traffic to their blog in the long run instead of gaining from it. Not to mention if there’s any possibility of the blogger burning themselves out; Blogger Burnout.
Let’s say you need to post 4 posts a week and you normally do it once a day. Seven days minus the needed number lets you only have three days to spare. And if we count the days that we need to give ourselves a buffer thinking about a blogging topic, it might be spent during those three days. All that accounted for and if you’ve noticed, I never even mentioned for the blogger to put time aside for their own personal blog.
It’s going to be really tight and I think what the PPS blog should be is a journal explaining all about blogging. Yes, there are many local blogs that do it but none of them gain 3,000,000 hits monthly. The PPS blog should speak all that a prospect needs to know about blogging as a medium. It should be a place of education for those who’d like to discover more for their blogs and how they can add more value to it. PPS is the core for the Malaysian blogosphere therefore should pioneer local bloggers to success.
I believe that would work best for the PPS blogtal because a blog and ping/trackback are an arranged marriage. And since I just blogged; Is It a Blog?, about how many are still confused if they’re looking at a blog or a website, it’s time we educated the locals of the difference.
Malaysians need to learn more about blogs for it to really take of in Malaysia. I’m sure many are still weighting the benefits whilst trying to figure out its real value. :)
Outstanding comment. Perhaps a “Malaysian Blogging Guide” should be part of the topics covered?
Yes, in principal i agree — 3-5 posting is a lot + maintaining their own blog. Perhaps the answer is to increase the number of bloggers, and reduce the required number of postings to 2-4 each per week?
If you’ve got more authors, say 2 authors per category. You divide the task of 2-4 posts a week and that delegates to each of them only posting either 1 or 2 posts a week each. If either of them wants to post extra, let them talk it over and decide. That way not only it makes the content more interesting but also creates a bond between bloggers. :)
I’m not too concerned of the blog being solely about blogging but more like if there’s too much content, then what good is reading the PPS blog in comparison with some other peoples blog. Blogging right now is such a huge thing and everyone is blogging the common thing. I’ve spoken about blogging on a niche and I think that’s what the PPS blog needs to help add more value to their existence. :)
Anyway, that’s my personal opinion.
hi
as a blogger with a new blog network at weblogempire.com, I am committed to my boss “duncan riley” from blogherald.com to write a min of 3 posts a day. We just started from June and sometimes I do get some burnout from looking for new stuff to differentiate ourselves from biggies like engadget and gizmodo.com
But I still do try to post a min of 3 articles and sometimes I post more. So I guess its up to the individual. IF you get a very passionate person, then its no problem. But in the case of PPS, it would be good to have at least 2 bloggers for each section as a backup plan and even have guest bloggers like Problogger.net did in June 2005.
One thing I found out is that normal user logins (guest) dont allow image uploads for wordpress
Hope this comment is useful.
As passionate as some people might be, you can kill a person’s passion with the wrong practice. For instance; if you were a creative designer forced to always achieve a certain quota of work in a company without flexibility (working late every single day), you end up burning up your own employee later on.
I believe it takes litte to kill a passion but more to try and retain it. :)
Cheers.
If I had to blog something different for PPS (or any other service) as well as maintain my own blog, my brain would short-circuit!
Cool.. I’m in the process of setting up my new blog network.. actually a reworking of my old Knux Knetwork that I set up when I was 14..
Ya, I do agree with you. Actually when I read that condition, I got worried whether I would get burnt out. If you turn a hobby into a chore, I won’t enjoy it anymore.
BTW, thanks for dropping by my blog.