JoelFoner.com

I have been asked to be a panelist today at “Endorsements and Ethics in Social Media”, to talk about the implications of the new disclosure guidelines published by the Federal Trade Commission.

John Jainschigg, Executive Director, Internet & Technology Lab, ZiffDavisEnterprise is moderating today’s event and the panel will include Clint Boulton, Senior Writer at eWeek.com (ZiffDavisEnterprise) and Mitch Wagner, Senior Writer at InformationWeek.com (TechWeb).

You can watch on the web http://www.stvirtual.com/todaysvid.html at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern, or if you already have a Second Life account please feel free to join us at http://slurl.com/secondlife/SmarterTechnology%201/230/98/34.

Please see the announcement below for more information):

Endorsements and Ethics in Social Media – New FTC Guidelines

New FTC guidelines for online ‘endorsements,’ announced in October and now in effect (as of Dec. 1), aim to make more explicit sponsorship arrangements between online content providers (e.g., bloggers, Tweeters, Facebook posters, viral-video uploaders, etc.) and the companies and products they cover (opine about, retweet, call attention to, and/or “build buzz” around). What will these new guidelines mean for the commentariat, publishers, viral marketers, corporate bloggers and other stakeholders?

Guests:
Joel Foner, New-Media Consultant, Blogger (ex. Sidewinder Linden)
Clint Boulton, Senior Writer, eWeek.com (ZiffDavisEnterprise)
Mitch Wagner, Senior Writer, InformationWeek.com (TechWeb)

Moderator: John Jainschigg, Exec. Director, Internet & Technology Lab, ZiffDavisEnterprise

JOIN US ON THE WEB VIA VIDEO AND CHAT

1. Register on the web at http://www.smartertechnology.com/c/s/Smarter-Technology-Virtual-World/
2. Confirm your registration by clicking the link in the email you receive. (Check spam filter!)
3. Return to http://www.smartertechnology.com/c/s/Smarter-Technology-Virtual-World/ – click the Login tab, and log in with your email address and password
4. Press the Engage tab for our web-based conference center, where you can view the live event on video and participate via text-chat.

JOIN US LIVE IN SECOND LIFE

IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A SECOND LIFE ACCOUNT, AND HAVE THE SECOND LIFE CLIENT INSTALLED ON YOUR COMPUTER: Please register as above, and confirm registration, then click this link to teleport directly to our virtual conference center:
(SLURL) http://slurl.com/secondlife/SmarterTechnology%201/230/98/34

IF YOU DON’T YET HAVE A SECOND LIFE ACCOUNT, WE’LL MAKE YOU ONE:

1. Register at http://www.smartertechnology.com/c/s/Smarter-Technology-Virtual-World/
2. Scroll down (on the second page of registration) and fill out the CREATE SECOND LIFE ACCOUNT form to create a Second Life avatar.
3. Download the Second Life client for Windows, Mac or Linux and install.
4. Plug a headset into your computer.
5. Log into Second Life — You’ll appear at our virtual conference center.

ABOUT SMARTERTECHNOLOGY.COM

Sponsored by IBM, smartertechnology.com is an online community for strategists and IT decision-makers seeking to improve sustainability, efficiency and profitability through intelligent implementation of advanced technology throughout the enterprise. Join us online at http://www.smartertechnology.com

EMail sent by: John Jainschigg, 28 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a PDF document “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” that describes changes to the rules of disclosure for advertising endorsements and testimonials. These guides update existing rules regarding advertising disclosure to incorporate social media and go into effect tomorrow, Dec 1, 2009. I hope that a brief overview of the Guides will be a useful reference.

Disclosures

I do not work for the Federal Trade Commission, have no connection to the organization to disclose, and since this article is not an endorsement in the first place, I guess I didn’t even need to say that, but… given the topic I figured it couldn’t hurt!

Actually, my important disclaimer is I wrote this post with my understanding of the rules, from reading source documents and walking through the “Guides” PDF document linked above. I am not a lawyer. Nothing I say here should be construed as legal advice. Nothing. At all. In the least. Did I remember to mention that I am not a lawyer?

I am hoping that an overview of the new disclosure rules will be helpful. Please feel free to comment on anything I’ve gotten wrong, right or anything else important that got missed!

Is Every Product or Service Description an Endorsement?

All descriptions of products and consumer experiences in “consumer-generated media” are not considered to be endorsements by the Commission. The Guides state that the rules apply to situations where, “viewed objectively, the relationship between the advertiser and the speaker is such that the speaker’s statement can be considered “sponsored” by the advertiser and thus an “advertising message.”

Why Self-Regulation Did Not Win

Some commenters suggested that the industry should be allowed to self-regulate. The Commission clearly disagreed with this position, stating Read more…

Final edit updated Nov 28, 2009 22:40

Random Connections

Some days I’ll be thinking about a topic, and suddenly an unexpected connection appears. That just happened as I was reading two posts, one about potential changes to PageRank and another about a new protocol that Google is pitching to speed up web page loads. The PageRank discussion seemed to be completely about the marketing impact of this change on search engine optimization strategies, while the protocol discussions were centered on technology and global standards issues. It seems that these two apparently separate things may be very tightly coupled indeed.

PageRank, Page Speed And Marketing Effects

PageRank is supposed to measure the authority of a page, to determine whether
it is “the best” trusted and primary resource to answer the user’s search query. It is hard to fathom how response speed has anything to do with authenticity, authority, correctness of data or trustworthiness. It seems to be much more strongly linked to the cash position of the person or organization who authored the page, and how much they have invested in having the right page design, hardware and network infrastructure (either their own or hosted) to provide fast response.

One quasi-altruistic reason for adding or emphasizing page load in the PageRank calculations may be to nudge the web community to think more about page load speed when designing sites. However Read more…

Today at the MassDOT Developer Conference we got to talking about the goal of changing the image of buses and other mass transit to be the solution of choice for a wider spectrum of people.  Lost time is sometimes the reason that people will drive instead of taking public transportation.  It often takes longer to get to your goal using mass transit, and while en-route, you often can’t get much done, other than people watching or reading.

Then this little idea appeared…

Read more…