Normally, someone getting advertisements on their blog isn’t a big deal. People add advertisements to their blogs every day, and the fact that it is Robert Scoble changing over to the “dark side” isn’t all that interesting to me either.
If his new employers want to re-design his blog and put advertisements on it, who am I to complain?
What is interesting to me is that the Scobleizer blog is hosted by the WordPress.com service, which usually abhors any type of advertising on their blogs.
Are VIP members able to break the “no-advertising” rule set forth by Automattic? Yes, they can! Do they deserve to break such rules just because of who they are? Is Scoble more deserving of putting FastCompany advertisements on his blog than you putting a banner from your favourite web host on yours?
While I think advertising has to be strictly controlled and moderated on WordPress.com, so as to not become like Blogger’s spam filled archives, I don’t think that people like Scoble are more deserving than anyone else to display advertising on their hosted blog.
Maybe I am jumping the gun here, and Scobleizer will be moved off the WordPress.com platform? Well, I think that is highly doubtful, as GigaOM has advertisements on it, and is a WordPress.com hosted blog.
The fact is that I am an idealist, and I believe that the same rules should apply for everyone, at least as much as possible. Sure, Automattic might be earning a fair bit of cash on some of these VIP blogs, but I highly doubt it.
I am not questioning Automattic’s decision to let Scoble add advertisements on his blog, but instead I am wondering why they don’t make member blog advertising a higher priority? Would you be willing to give up 20% of whatever revenue your blog could make through an advertising system managed by WordPress.com? I am pretty sure I would be willing to take such a deal.
I would love to know what you all think of WordPress.com’s no advertising policy and what effect it has for you as a blogger? Truth be told, if it wasn’t for WordPress.com’s no advertising policy, I would probably push to have all of the Splashpress’ blogs moved over to their system.
