Placebloggers, like lots of bloggers out there, are often looking for ways to make a few dollars from their blogging. If you've ever been contacted by a company to try one of their products in exchange for money or even for a free product, the Federal Trade Commission will soon require that you make it abundantly clear that your endorsement of the product has been paid for by the company.
From a RedOrbit item on the impending regulations:
Bloggers who often review a product may be tightlipped about receiving perks from the company that markets the product. Their reading audience often peruses the Web, reading several blogs to find out if a product or service is best for them.
Now the FTC has announced new guidelines that, once approved, would allow the agency to investigate bloggers as well as the firms that pay the bloggers to represent their product or service in a good light.
"If you walk into a department store, you know the (sales) clerk is a clerk," Rich Cleland, assistant director in the FTC's division of advertising practices, told the Associated Press."
The Associated Press story on the matter notes that because of the new guidelines, some bloggers may stop blogging altogether, while some believe any guidelines for bloggers should come from the blogging community itself. Yet the blogging community is a pretty wide and diverse group, and all of its members are not always in the same part of the blogosphere, nor are they on the same ethical page. So, the FTC's guidelines may have a wider reach than just the passing along of new conventions that happens in among bloggers (often rather slowly, and sometimes not at all.) The FTC may be the best means for letting bloggers know how to handle when they are approached by a company for an endorsement.
Still, what about transparency in our own community. How might you feel to find out that a blogger you trusted was paid to endorse a product? IMO, I'd wonder if what the person was saying wasn't because he/she wanted to be considered for getting more product endorsements. After all, do companies really want to hear the "bad news" about their products??
So, make note: if you receive any goods or payments, always disclose where they came from. Even if the , FTC doesn't find you, it's a good community practice to be transparent .
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