I've seen marketing companies that are supposed experts completely screw it up on forums before. But I've also seen genuine posters expertly manage to subtlely promote their business without any spamming at all. The marketing companies are employing the wrong people!
Well done, guys. Spammers really do suck. (Fortunately it appears that the bulk of them are pretty simple.)
In general we have no problems with regular users who promote themselves or their businesses every now and then, specially if its a small business.I've also seen genuine posters expertly manage to subtlely promote their business without any spamming at all.
Neither does the other forum where I've seen it (a lot more than here), because the free advice they give to other posters is immense. In that case it's a ski forum, so for example a poster might ask a technical question about how to ski, an instructor answers it, then the person asking the question decides to take a lesson with them. Later the poster writes a review about how great the lesson was. That's the way to really use social networking sites effectively - and I don't understand how these big companies just don't get that!
Big Companies don't get it because they are focused on exploiting for material gain. Not sharing for mutual benefit. That's the difference.
Is that why it disappeared?
If you mean 'The consumer goes with the small companies that offer better service' then great and I hope that the trend continues and grows. Most consumers though go with the flash advert and the price.