And this post is sponsored by ANYwebcam.com Personal

The experiment continues. This was the first review offered me by ReviewMe, and naturally, in the spirit of experimentation, I accepted like a shot.

So, basically, it’s a tool to add a MySpace widget to your profile (it also supports other social networks) that gives you live access to your webcam from your own page, and obviously a feed from another user of the service. It is a free service that you can sign up for here. You ultimately pay with adverts on the website, it seems. Using Anywebcam is apparently pretty simple: just copy a Javascript into your MySpace profile and bob is your uncle, as they say. If you use MySpace to communicate with people who are geographically displaced from you, then this could be a real boon.

While mainstream users of MySpace might benefit from this sort of thing, there’s a good reason for many of them being put off by it. It is restricted to adult users, 18 and over. There are porn and dating sites advertised on the top banner of the site, and elsewhere. Maybe that is a good indicator of some of the people who want this sort of thing. It was interesting to see that “Over 8 million girls in [my] area are SEEKING SEX — FREE Reviews!!”. I wonder who conducts these reviews and the methodology for their results? As I understand it, there are only 4mn women in London. I do hope that they were not duped.

I’m pretty confident that there are healthy (!?) sex-chatline companies working off the back of MySpace and that this sort of service is pretty attractive to them. It’s really a shame, though, that a potentially useful tool should be drawn down to this sort of level. Judging from the marketing graphics, they started off as a service geared at teens, then realised the real money was in sex.

The site has a pretty massive T&C document that I haven’t read. Since it comprises acres of text, I would be surprised if any registered users had read it. Always a great sign of a company to trust.

I kind of wonder why Anywebcam hasn’t yet been killed off by MySpace themselves, in the same way that they have killed off other third-party widgets. Perhaps because they are not yet ready with an equivalent service themselves, or are anxious about possible sexual abuse and prostitution connotations to the service.

People reacting to the Techcrunch notice about ReviewMe and elsewhere said that it would be unlikely that people who posted negative reviews would get hired again. I’m not being negative deliberately. This is my honest (negative) opinion about this service — and, as you can see, it’s not quite as thorough a review as it might have been. Let’s see.

This is an experiment. How do those words at the top make me feel? I am 40, have been a journalist for seven years, a website author for eight years, but a blogger for less than six months. This is how it has worked when it came to professional magazine reviews — I’ve been lucky, having entered the profession at the editor position and therefore having had a lot of control over what I did.

(a) I chose the stuff I wanted to review. I reviewed it positively or negatively as I saw fit. If it’s rubbish, I call it.

(b) I have never written an advertorial that did not appear clearly marked as advertorial. But I have written advertorials.

© Journalists get a lot of perks. Lunches, free drinks, foreign trips. It compensates for proper pay. UK journalists do not get paid well.

So ReviewMe — a new service that pays hacks like me to review ‘stuff’ to order. You can be positive or negative, and have to declare your financial interest. How do I feel about it?

Well, I guess it comes down to the reasons why you want to blog. I set up this blog as a personal database. After a while, I realised it had an audience. I started to find people and have conversations with people as a consequence. The blog started to become a personal network, a soapbox and an information base for my own purposes. I’m also trying to use it for career progression. It’s my online CV, to a much greater degree than linkedin and so forth can provide. So those words at the top, “This review is sponsored by ReviewMe”…

How does ReviewMe affect that? I only really have meanderings about that.

• My readers matter more to me than the money. I haven’t carried adverts for a while, but decided that was a bit silly and am hoping to have some soon. None of my readers would stop reading the publications or blogs they like on that basis, I think.
• It makes this blog more like a publication but is it less of a personal conversation? That’s the bit I find pretty hard. I’m not really here for the money, but if I can get some… fuck it. Nothing will change in that regard, I can’t do it.
• If I get feedback that this is shit, and “I thought you were with us, Ian, but now I realise that you’re just a stooge for the MAN”, then I will stop.
• When I read a magazine I like, I normally flick past the ads to the articles I like. It doesn’t stop me liking the magazine. Can a blog be like that?

Sometimes, as a magazine writer, the ad-guy or girl comes up to you and says “I’d really appreciate it if you talked about PRODUCTX next issue. It could really help us.”

I say, “I will if it’s interesting.” That remains my policy.