Happy FTC Day

Well, it was yesterday, but nevertheless, bloggers are now in a new world.

A world where everyone needs to disclose everything.

Now, I won’t take a side on disclosure in the offline world. I am a fan of it in the online world-honesty and openness are both really good things. However, the FTC makes things interesting:

If a company provides any incentive (product, coupon, trip, special discount, cash) to a specific person in exchange for a recommendation, a material relationship exists.

The reason that I find this interesting is that it does not effect most people, yet there is a TON of controversy over it-much of it over the rumored $11,000 fine.

Also, I find it interesting that it just says that “Material relationships must be disclosed to readers.” It does not give any good guidelines, such as if each post needs it, or if a disclosure page is good enough.

Now this seems easy, but it can get tricky. I am attending CES this winter in Las Vegas. I am using frequent flyer miles, and staying at a house rented by my dads company-is there a material relationship in there? How about my press pass-since I am getting special treatment, does that turn into a material relationship with CES?

This also seems like it will be hard to enforce-there are just too many blogs.

My view on this policy is like police searching a car-if you have nothing to hide, why are you so worried? If you are honest, this policy does nothing more than add a disclosure page.

You can read the exact text of the FTC guidelines HERE.

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