Bloggers Beware – You Could Be Fined For Taking Gifts For Endorsing!

One of the primary reasons that I started blogging was because a blog is a weblog, i.e. a kind of a personal diary where you write your heart out on any issue or happening occurring in the world around you. A blogger is a free bird, who puts forward purely personal opinion uninfluenced by any external agency. But as social opinion on the cyber forums started gaining importance as the biggest communication mode, blogging also came under the roving eyes of business people, politicians and other influential members of society. To an opportunistic eye, every thing that draws its attention is a resource for making money or getting fame. So it did not take these highly ‘innovative people’ to use bloggers to endorse their products. Just like celebrities and models the bloggers too became the tools for them to blow trumpets about their products and services. Their formula was straight, offer money or gifts to a blogger and he’s going to make your company, product or service look as though it’s the only best thing that happened to this planet.

I agree with the Federal Trade Commission going really tough with bloggers who accept money or cash for endorsing products. Along with them even celebrities will be fined if they don’t state accepting cash or gifts for endorsing. If you’re a blogger you need to clearly state your relationship type with the advertiser. Not only your posts, but the comments that you make on blog posts as well as in social networking sites will come under the FTC scanner. Even traditional advertising also seems to be covered under the scanner.

Blogging is a serious affair now, especially if you are a paid blogger. No more is it an intellectual hobby where you can afford to err. If you are a blogger always keep your facts well researched and substantiated with proofs. Also write only when you understand an issue completely. If you give false or misleading information or don’t substantiate your arguments you’re done for! The FTC cudgel will fall on you soon.

I don’t’ find this rule unjust. Social media is meant for free opinion. Blogging essentially gained such widespread popularity because it was different from other types of information presentation on the internet. Here people could freely voice their opinions and other people could form their own opinions from them. Conventionally, websites had factual information or whatever the owners of the website spoke about their companies or products. Naturally in the official webpage of a service provider you’ll find only positive feedback about the company and its history. When blogging came into the scene, the true picture of the worthiness of companies, products, services, people, subjects….anything and everything under the sun, came out in the open. People value this true information.

Blogging is one of the most influential modes of social change. If want to make progress, let us not make it a marketing tool. Let blogging remain free. Only freedom can lead to true enlightenment which is inevitable for the progress of mankind.