Pings are rather.. well, useless, to begin with. They need more of a purpose. I have a couple of suggestions for pings:

(1) Perhaps it could be possible that the thread you've been pinged in could be highlighted;

(2) Or maybe you could have a small link to the left of Settings. When you would click on that link, the following page would list all the thread's you've been pinged in as well as who pinged you.