BuySellAds.com (BSA) is an online advertising marketplace. Their publicly searchable database of publishers includes over 2,300 manually approved websites of a generally high quality. The sites primarily fall somewhere in the technology and design categories, but they do have some sites that fall into other categories, such as music, gaming and more.

Some might consider them a smaller, more exclusive AdBrite. I played around with AdBrite, a long time ago, but never had any luck. But, I have had luck with BSA.

photo credit: dichohecho

Banning gets a bad rap. Yes, I just said that.

Most people have never seriously managed a structured online community (e.g. forums) and so, most people don’t understand the importance of banning to a well moderated online community. Any type of control exerted by anyone in authority is often criticized unfairly by the general public, many of whom are not aware of the context or the responsibility of the position that one is placed in.

Some people will criticize banning, talk about how it is ineffective (“they can just come back”), talk about how you should find another way. I always shake my head (privately) when someone says “I manage a community and I’ve never banned anyone!” Really? No disrespect, but are you sure that you’re managing a structured online community? Or is it a free-for-all? Or is it just you on there?

photo credit: tompagenet

One thing that some forum members often assume is that when a post or contribution they made to an online community or forum is removed, it is because someone complained to the staff about it or someone reported it.

Of course, that is often not the case. Especially on my sites, where the vast majority of removed posts were reported by no one. Generally speaking, I have to believe that most content that is removed on proactively managed communities is removed without being reported.

There are good reasons for this. Among them:

BlogWorld & New Media Expo is less than a month away. For the third consecutive year (read my 2008 and 2009 recaps), I’ll be speaking at the event, but I will have more going on at the conference than ever before.

I’ll be speaking on three panels, two of which I developed and will moderate (note: it’s not the typical moderator format, I will contribute equally). So, that’s pretty crazy.

On Twitter, you have what is called a verified account. In Twitter’s words, a verified account is among the solutions that they are beta testing “so users can trust that the accounts they follow are legitimate.”

Furthermore, when Twitter users visit a verified account, they “know that tweets coming from well known personalities, organizations, government agencies, and others on Twitter are the real thing!”

photo credit: Miala

Role playing time! I manage a good sized community around a particular niche. I am looking for advertisers. So, I identify some online stores that sell products to the people who comprise my community’s audience. The online store that you work for is one of those I find and I contact you.

I e-mail you, I introduce myself and share some information about my site. I think we could be a good fit for you. I offer to send you our media kit and rate card and to answer any questions that you may have. Do you:

photo credit: BuzzShift

Last year at BlogWorld & New Media Expo (this year’s iteration is October 14-16 in Las Vegas and I’ll be there), I led a panel titled “Social Media: The Bad and the Ugly” with Amber Naslund, Robert Scoble and Wayne Sutton.

On the panel, we talked about trends in social media that concerned us and that we felt could harm the growth of the medium as a whole. These are also trends that could harm your brand, scare people away and damage your reputation. We highlighted six trends in all.