Bloggers Will Have To Disclose Freebies

New guideline released by the Federal Trade Commission will soon force bloggers to adopt a higher standard of disclosure as they will have to tell readers when they got money or in-kind services from a company they write about. In addition, the commission also said that celebrities must disclose a relationship with a company when they talk about products somewhere besides traditional ads, such as in talk shows or social network sites. And, the FTC also made it more difficult for fitness and diet products to make outlandish claims about weight loss or muscle gain while protecting themselves by simply stating, "results not typical." The ads will have to include information about what the typical results might be. But by far the portion of the guidelines that caused the biggest uproar had to do with bloggers, whom marketers have been increasingly targeting as influential voices. There are no guidelines on how the disclosure should be made, but if the FTC is unsatisfied with the disclosure it could file a cease-and-desist order. If ignored, bloggers could be fined as much as $11,000 per violation. Still, there are questions of how realistic it is to expect the FTC to enforce the rule considering how many bloggers there are out there. Others worried that always disclosing a relationship might not even be possible. "What kind of disclosure can one fit into a 140-character Twitter message, anyway?" asked one blogger.

Read original story in The Wall Street Journal | Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2009