I've actually had this happen to me a few months ago; I tried to sign in and my account was locked due to some private pictures I had stored. I decided to just wait out the the "grace period" they gave me. When I checked back a few weeks later, my account was left unchanged. I hadn't even contacted support, so I'm curious as to why my situation was any different. As far as I can tell, all charges were dropped.
Things may have changed in the last few years as blogspam is still pretty lucrative and has continued to advance, but I remember reading a study a few years ago (found here: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2007/04/09/why-wordpresscom-i...) that made the conclusion that by barring Wordpress.com bloggers from using AdSense and other advertising services, they significantly cut down on the amount of spam Blogger and other services had to deal with. Wordpress.com does have WordAds (http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/wordads/).
Otherwise, if you don't qualify for WordAds, self-hosting may be your best option.
The majority of sites that I've seen using Project Wonderful gave been online comics, and since that's a big market for the site, I personally couldn't recommend it for just anyone. While I do think the idea behind it is really nice and a great way to promote smaller advertisers, I've only been able to sell ad space really cheaply since a lot of markets are just underrepresented. Makes me sort of wish PW was a bit bigger.
From my own experiences (viewing SEO as a "hobby"), I do think the type of semi-blackhat SEO that's most prevalent - the 20k blog comment blasts and automated WhoIs reports - is righteously dying out. It may take a while since a lot of people still believe that's the easy way to rank highly (and I think a lot of the SEO world fuels that notion to a degree), but I'm at least hopeful.
But I also think it's hard not to use a majority of greyhat methods and, because of that, current greyhat methods shouldn't be totally discredited. It's really time consuming do to a lot of things without using blackhat tools like ScrapeBox and SEnuke X. However, recognize that these tools can be used for more than just spamming. Many popular tools are great for finding a few really targeted sites to, for example, actually post legitimate blog comments to. And I doubt methods and tools that are used by so many blackhats will die out soon. They can still be a vital asset to people who do take into account the health of the Internet and use greyhat methods responsibly.
I'm not familiar with the outcome of any other "failed" projects, but has Kickstarter ever forcibly refunded money or intervened in any way? If not... they're obviously growing (nearly 4x as much pledged in 2011) and I don't know if more strict guidelines would really help.
One feature that feels kinda necessary while the ideas are sparse is the ability to skip (or not have repeating) ideas. Otherwise, I feel like I've already read over all the submissions in just a few minutes.
Personally, I just hoped people would vote multiple times on the same idea. Anyhow, you may have seen all the ideas in just a few minutes. When you left this comment there were not many ideas.
It sounds gimmicky when you add on top of the 3 item, 2 day, and 5% off restrictions that it's only on select products and valid in select stores. Nice headline news, but shouldn't Amazon be looking to find people who'll become long-term users?
This is finding long term users. It's getting people into the habit of checking Amazon's prices using their phones. Generally, Amazon is competitive enough that they can beat brick and mortar prices, especially when you take sales tax into account (in some states, at least).
It's also trying to get people who don't normally shop online to try it out, under the assumption that once they do it a few times, they'll feel more comfortable doing it in the future.
As long as the submitted sites aren't the latest social network simply mining for more data/active users, it sounds like it could foster a great community.
For the sales of Crawford's book to go from 6 (/day?) to 5,000+ makes me question how many of those aren't really fans and are just readers because it was an impulse "buy". At least he maintained his 4.5 star rating even with the flood of downloads.
