Federal Truncheon Commision
The FTC have had a bit of a rule overreach with their recent guide for endorsements and testimonials
FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials
. This is the blog specific rule set released earlier this month. It is a rather detailed document too running eighty plus pages! The main and obvious weakness is that these rules don't apply to existing print and broadcast media: Magazines, Newspapers TV
Ad group: FTC blog rules unfairly muzzle online media - Ars Technica. There would be no business to be in if they did. Perhaps the FTC figures bloggers more publicly collegial, more peer normed than the media. And more trusted therefore. I don't suppose it ever fooled anyone when Woofer Review monthly would glowing review a speaker or turntable opposite a full page ad from the same. The FTC seems inclined to place web-loggers in a category not unlike celebrity endorsements. And of course if Mikey likes it that's good enough for me. The denizens of the world wide web are aghast. The Wild Westerners especially: this is that particular breed inclined to think of the internet as some wide open libertarian rule-less frontier. The Wild West is nearly a synonym for the very desire to behave badly - to extend your boundary over someone else on the myth that it is a boundless plain. Spam Kings and Trolls.
The great concern is that ordinary people may be representing to other ordinary people not out of dispassionate estimate alone. I never tell people about anything I don't believe is isn't worth their consideration not simply mine Communicating with other people is something fraught with peril and pitfalls to be sure. Lets look at how this works, I'm sure I can invent a small example to illustrate this
I have in the past praised the noisy and fuzzy but clever and inventive San Francisco band the Sic Alps. I was quite pleased when their most recent single "L. Mansion" turned up on Slumberland records. This is a good and harmonious thing I thought - and I've now written it here. Yet within in me doubts rose and I went to the bookcase where I keep various 7" records and discovered I have a copy of Slumberland no.1 "What Kind of heaven do you want?" I didn't buy that record either - It was given to me; by someone named Mike or Dan or Archie, or maybe Pam. The exact details escape me. Suddenly in a cold sweat I realized the true origins of my mention, my endorsement of the Sic Alps. Naked consideration for a Velocity Girl/Black Tambourine/PowderBurns 7" compilation ep given to me twenty years ago. After I spent an afternoon helping Dan and Mike cut-out images photocopied from a Winsor Mackay book. The real story here is modern Marketing outreach rather Marketing co-option. There is a very large body of literature on how the Internet and Social Media tools can help you sell your product (
Internet Marketing ). The idea here is that if you can identify the opinion leaders the high traffic sites and turn them, no more efficient marketing strategy could be imagined. Frankly with some inherent skepticism I think if the FTC gets the idea that what is going on here is more in the nature of Astroturfing and gorilla marketing by established corporate bodies, with lobbyists on retainer, and that web loggers are merely docile bodies in their hands, lacking agency. They may then decide then, that it all just the free market at play, and no great concern after all. Well, we'll always have caveat emptor.
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