The spotlight on Company forums are one way that a company can advertise on the TMF, and we have had a long and happy relationship with TiB and his company.
Oddly a few months back the monthy payments for the advertising stopped. We, based on our good relationship with TiB and Realtickling let things go, after all life gets busy etc. It's summer and folks are on vacation... we all know how it goes.
But after repeated attempts to contact him or whoever now owns Realtickling (there was a sudden change in the ISP of the person using the TiB account, suggesting a change in user on it) in the past week, and getting no answers at all we turned the forum off.
We are very sorry about doing it as there was a lot of cool stuff in there, but a simple answer to our many attempts to contact whomever is now responsible for realtickling would have shown that someone cared about the advertising and forum.
I personaly believe that the company has been sold, and there probably was some silence aspect to the sale contract so the real TiB couldn't say anything or tell us. If this is the case, the new folks seem less interested in being part of the community and interacting with us then TiB was it seems.
Happily the community is seeing a true golden age of new producers this year. Tickle Abuse, Tickle Challenge, Tickle Chicks, and Viper Productions are all making amazing material that seems to be filling the gaps left as older producers go quiet.
I'm sure in time a new forum will pop up to replace the old ones gone. Any of the above may well find it profitable to take a more personal touch with all of us.
Myriads