""Most often, I think, they are paid to provoke postings by others. Afterall, most of these on-line message boards make their money by the number of clicks or page views they receive - the more replies bashers can generate, the more money the Web host earns - they don't believe what they write, they only want replies, any kind of replies.""

This Is my view also. The board in question sells advertizing based on the viewership.

A look at web viewership and populaity.

advfn has more than twice the viewers than agoracom according to Alexa.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fih.advfn.com%2Fmarketing%2Finvestorshub-newswire-press-release-distribution-service