FTC Cracks Down on Sponsored Bloggers

Many blog posts and "tweets" went out yesterday regarding the Federal Trade Commission's rule updates governing endorsements, and the new guidelines requiring bloggers to clearly disclose any "material connection" to an advertiser, including payments for endorsements or free product.

The new rules go into effect Dec.1 and penalties include $11,000 in fines per violation (blog post).

These rules include posts on review sites such as Yelp or online stores such as Amazon, where the writer is being compensated in some way.

Our take on this whole issue is that social media (whether it be product reviews, news, information, etc) is really about genuine conversations, with open transparency. Good for the FTC to mandate but people who do not come out and say they received a product for free to review or are paid to write a review are not people that web users are going to believe. The web is already pretty self policing. If you really want bloggers and key web influencer's to write something believable, give them the product, and let them be honest and open about it.