I just found this blog post which reports that the Federal Trade Commission have issued some new advertising guidelines. The net of it is that if you post a favourable review on a blog when you have been paid to do so (or given free stuff instead), you must disclose that rather salient fact in your post.
About time! I have had a lot of trouble in my research into road bike componentry: you can’t tell when you read a glowing report in a blog post whether it is really a good product or a paid-for report. Even after this there are going to be some problems, in that if you’ve bought something expensive you want to convince yourself it was a good purchase, but it is going to help a lot once they start enforcing it I’m sure.
For the record, thus far no-one has paid me to review anything. Should it happen I’ll tell you up-front. If SRAM want to give me a complete set of 2011 RED or Shimano want me to take a good look at wireless DI2 I’d have no problem with either of those.
[...] 7, 2009 · Leave a Comment Earlier this week I heard that the Federal Trade Commission has introduced new advertising guidelines, which amount to rules for bloggers who review products. A contact of mine also sent me a link to [...]