Sponsored Comments Might Just Break the Internet

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By: Mike Bush

“There goes the neighborhood,” is only an appropriate phrase when it’s a neighborhood somehow going downhill. Maybe it’s a house on a particular block selling for half of what it’s worth, and everyone else’s property value being brought down. Perhaps it’s as simple as a sewer pipe bursting and making a mess.

So it begs the question, what happens when the neighborhood with the worst reputation goes downhill? “There stays the neighborhood?”

Well, thanks to Disqus, we’re about to find out.

One of the Internet’s largest havens for trolls and most widely used commenting systems is going to allow sponsored comments.

There could be some brand uses here I suppose (maybe if someone says something nice about your brand, you’d sponsor a comment to say "thanks"), although that could be construed as some sort of endorsement (depending on how strict a legal department in your company is).

In general, though, this just seems like taking what’s typically known as the worst part of the web and throwing an advertiser into the mix.

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About the Author

Mike Bush is a PR and Marketing freelancer with more than a dozen years of experience in the field. Find him on and connect Twitter @mikebush or at www.mikebush.nyc.

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