Forbes has written the screenplay to the up-coming Web 2.0 movie on PubSub. It's a good read and confirms most of what I've heard independently. I've had a few dealings with Bob Wyman (exchanged emails and blog posts) and Salim Ismail (met twice), the founders. Bob was very standoffish and denied a problem with the blogosphere ping even though the PubSub website, which relied on the ping, was mostly unfunctional. I can't wait for Salim's tell-all book.
Morale of the movie: Sometimes... ping is better than push.
Randy,
I really don't understand why you keep repeating this business about my "denying" a problem. I have tried to explain to you that the problem you were seeing had nothing to do with the general pinging infrastructure, feedmesh, etc. It was a problem, "issue" or bug with the system that we were using to report links. I pointed this on a number of occaisions including in a comment to the post you link to above. The issue wasn't with PINGING! What you were seeing was a bug in our LinkCount/LinkRank system. So, yes, I deny the specific "problem" that you keep talking about. I deny it because you are talking about the wrong problem!
bob wyman
Randy