The debut post by a new contestant to ComputerWorld Canada’s Blogging Idol this week drew fire from some participants who were surprised by its sudden and expected number of page views.
Vijay wrote and published a short post on pay-per-click advertising that, within hours, had scored close to 1,000 page views, and has since surpassed front-runner Pedro Cardoso‘s post on the Palm Pre as the most-viewed blog post in the contest, which began March 23. Several contestants entered comments below the post wondering whether it was fair that a blog entry should become so popular through the use of Twitter or other social networking tools. The post, however, was also picked up by Google with good rankings, and IT World Canada responded by suggesting that using available tools to promote content is a good practice for all contestants. Cardoso later followed up with his own tutorial on Twitter and how to put it to good use. CTO Steve Harris also wrote about Twitter and its adoption by businesses.
Week three of the contest also saw the debut of Tania Samsonova, who wrote a detailed post about 17 free or inexpensive tools to establish or enhance your online presence. The post was well-received by the other bloggers and earned several hundred page views in its first day.
Chris Lau probably managed to offer the most news-oriented post of the week with an analysis of IBM’s failed bid to acquire Sun Microsystems, a deal that had been expected to materialize in a matter of days. Last year’s Blogging Idol winner Don Sheppard offered his own thoughts on the deal, as well as one on the challenges of managing Facebook, LinkedIn and other online tools.
While a few other bloggers were silent, perhaps due to a short work week, Laird John Bowie offered another post linking to a map of the 333 most influential Web domains and 111 most influential Internet people.