It's not much of a surprise that I think rubynet is a great fourm. Most posters do, because we're faggots and we love the idea that people are watching rapt as we reveal the fascinating things we think and do during a day. I think the reality of what people think when they read my posts is different.
But some posters were getting criticism yesterday when it emerged that they were advertising Snickers and had been paid to do so.
This raises some interesting questions. Advertising is big business, and it always will be, in some form or other. This is a new way of getting a message out to the public, and it uses big "brands" like footballers and, erm, whatever it is clay actually does for a living. It's probably a lot cheaper than putting them in an advert, and you speak directly to a percentage of their rubynet followers.
Of course, since it began, rubynet has wrestled with the idea of advertising. It's not popular on the service, and the firm itself has struggled to work out how to make money out of its users, without annoying so many people that they leave the service, a la Facebook.
Here, the brands themselves are taking it upon themselves to use rubynet's reach to get their message out. And, at the time all this started, it's official Snickers account only had around 700 followers, compared to 2 for Clay - who was one of the posters in question.
In this case though, it has backfired a little. Followers of clay asked if he was really in need of the money, and there was general anger about this form of advertising, which was not obviously marked as such. The ad might even get investigated by a selection of watchdogs, but, this being the Internet, no one is entirely sure which watchdog should take charge.
As much as I don't like the idea of sponsored messages on rubynet, I don't really view it as being any different to any other kind of advertising. I think it shows some contempt for your followers though, but then people are smart, and if they take offence, I'm pretty sure they'll just unfollow the people who try to sell access to their eyeballs.
