FTC Stirs-up the Blogosphere

Of recent, there has been much debate over the FTC looking at the posts and reviews bloggers write about products & services. BusinessWeek kicked of this debate with their story, Blogola: The FTC Takes On Paid Posts Susan Getgood writes an excellent analysis of the FTC's intent in her post, The FTC is NOT gunning for mom bloggers

Lucid's perspective, value exchange, influence and disclosure between media properties and business have all been negotiated to varying degrees forever – but it was behind the scenes, often with the agency as the proxy. It is now a greater issue because it is being debated publicly and as Stephanie Smirnov aptly states on her recent post, ““Publisher” vs “editor” distinctions don’t apply…” with bloggers.

Our belief is that people (anybody) should benefit whenever they are approached by a businesses to help them achieve their objectives – whatever form that may take. Thus, we do feel bloggers should be compensated (money, free product, no expense trip, etc.) for their time and effort – and even for product reviews. We don’t believe that the compensation type makes a difference. Getting to keep a suite of appliances in exchange for reviews, is pretty (ahhhem) sweet –
which blogger Candace openly recognizes. And since she has fully disclosed her reward, her readers will maintain their trust. And as we all agree, full disclosure is the requirement.

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Mothers actively involved in online social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) are an important community of women. They are affecting social change from a grassroots up approach. From them, we learn about motherhood’s many joys and challenges, some of which were rarely discussed openly before. To their credit, we are no longer fed a homogenized version of motherhood and life from the mass media or celebrity perspective. Instead we enjoy unfiltered, unapologetic and, above all, sincere experiences from a variety of women living in real time.

These women are also highly coveted by businesses because of their influence, but they are often misunderstood for the reasons that they blog and the connections that they create.

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