The Online Citizen A Community of Singaporeans
Just when you thought the whole Xiaxue versus Gushcloud expose and retaliation was over, Singapore's leading trolling site, SMRT Ltd (Feedback), at the request of their fans today posted an expose on Xiaxue's attack on Gushcloud.
"Many have asked, why is SMRT Ltd (Feedback) even involved in this? Why so kaypoh?
Now, this article isn't about invalidating Xiaxue’s claims, neither is it meant to reinforce Gushcloud’s argument. We have no business interest in either. We don’t really care if Gushcloud is wrong or if Xiaxue replaces her nose every month.
The reason is because, aside from us being so righteous as fuck, we want to call out Xiaxue on her bullshit and tell you why people who live in glass houses, shouldn't throw stones."
Again, why does it matter to us? To be honest, we care little about the eternal war between Gushcloud and Nuffnang. But as before, an expose is always fun to read.
The first thrust by SMRT Ltd (Feedback) was on Xiaxue's viewership figures, which it explained has also been inflated. As SMRT pointed out, ditto.
"Firstly, the stats counter has been rigged to increase +1 per second. Any web developer will be able to tell you that, based on the Javascript coding that was used to deliver that function.
Secondly, she claims that 40,000 people view it everyday. Let’s do some simple math. 40K unique viewers per day equals to 280K unique viewers per week. Compare that to ‘600,724 Visitors’ in the past week as per shown in the stats counter."
In addition, SMRT noted that Xiaxue might also have been paying for readers. Tracking one particular post she made on Instagram, SMRT suggested that she might have used the services of instafamous, but lost likes when Instagram did a purge on fake accounts.
Using Socialbakers.com to derive this, SMRT also did a tongue-in-cheek on another local "celebrity".
That said, SMRT acknowledged that vieweship figures for any website would vary from month to month. What it did point on was that the peaks on Xiaxue's blog seem to coincide with instances where she have secured large advertising contracts.
SMRT then noted that these peaks in readership also coincide with times where Xiaxue would apparently orchestrate a controversial blog post to coincide with a advertising contract - be it bickering with another blogger or taking a stab at Gushcloud - with the intention of maximising page views for the benefit of the advertiser or sponsor.
"From here, we can deduce that in order for Xiaxue to prove to her clients that she can get as much viewership as possible, she will commence a ‘saga’ regardless if its relevant to her advertorial. In this way, she generates buzz and views and redirect them to her ads."
Finally, SMRT took issue with Xiaxue's analysis of Gushcloud's financial reports and explained why the company's loss, while appearing bad on paper, might not be really so. This is because any "loss" that Gushcloud reported might be due to the company's investment in its expansion.
In fact, SMRT suggested that Xiaxue did not reveal the financial figures of Nuffnang, Gushcloud's competitor and the company in which Xiaxue also has a stake in, to hide the possibility that Nuffnang could actually be worse off financially.
Now, that's a fair bit of accounts sleuthing. Where did SMRT get these figures from, and is the deduction accurate? We'll let you decide.
Meanwhile, the troll site has promised a part two for the expose, just to make sure you have #FaithInLupCheong.