While discussing the forums, some users and I talked about how neat it could be if there was a user "shout out" banner or sidebar. Users would pay some amount of currency and their shout out would be active for so many hours/days. Potentially it would rotate between the various shout outs that have been purchased.

To prevent spam, maybe it could be limited to subscribers only (I don't love this idea), have a limited number of active shouts per user, and/or have a large pebble fee on top. 50k or 100k pebbles a day would be a good sink to advertise a new shop, show off an event, link to an exciting sales thread, or just post a happy hoooowlidays message.

I'm thinking specifically TEXT-ONLY shoutouts. Images would have to be reviewed, but text could have the same restrictions as forum messages to reduce abuse. The only links allowed would be on-site links.

Sites like Horse Fable, Stardoll, and PCE have similar features.

I certainly wouldn't mind having a feature like that, especially as a pebble sink! I'm trying to think of any possible downsides, but tbh as long as it followed the same rules as the forum and had a report button just in case someone did use it innappropriately I think it'd be great. A side bar or banner wouldn't be any more intrusive than the banners and sidebars we already have, and I agree with XDragonfruitx about it reducing spam.