image courtesy of Twitter, croncast, and rerockstar
I'm not great at quick thoughts.
I was having a discussion today with Doug Lazovick, Jeff Turner, and Kris Smith about Kris' (@croncast) useful tool, CMP.ly which I've written about previously, "A quick and easy way to satisfy new FTC disclosure requirements on your blog - CMP.ly" when a thought that had been in the back of my head for some time came to the surface.
In the comment above, you can see Kris quotes "http://cmp.ly/4" at the end of his Tweet. This particular disclosure (CMP.ly Disclosure 4), states:
Employee/shareholder/business relationship
DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION
I have a direct relationship with a brand, topic or product that is mentioned herein.
As Kris is one of the founders of CMP.ly, it makes sense that he would disclose this when discussing it on blogs. That's the whole point of his site and why you should be using it in light of the FTC advocated fines for non-disclosure.
How about Twitter?
This had popped into my mind right after the FTC fines were announced. What about Twitter? It is often called a "micro-blogging" platform, so does it fall under those rules. Do we need to tag a URL (like the CMP.ly URL) at the end of every tweet about a product or service? What if I was comped a free lunch at Brasserie Pavil since they know I am a big fan of theirs (both for their restaurant and what they do on Twitter in a marketing sense). I love the free lunch and immediate tweeted "Just had the best service and food @BrasseriePavil"...would I be responsible to disclose my lunch's gratis status? I obviously should, in the interest of transparency, but what if the FTC saw that tweet and thought I was trying to get around the system. Would a tweet warrant a fine?
Just thinking out loud...
DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0
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Matt,
Funny you bring this up, but I was having a conversation with Jennifer Baumann (@jbaumann72) at Blog World about the current legal ramifications of employees who micro-blog, in their spare time, material that their employers may determine to be detrimental. She was mentioning that there are many trials going to court right now dealing with those issues.
Now I don't know whether or not micro-blogging falls under the FTC disclosures, but I think these questions bring to mind a more zen-like question: What exactly is micro-blogging?
Micro-blogging is essentially the same thing as a face-to-face conversation...except the faces are replaced with computers (or smart phones)..and the conversations are forever captured. When you have a face-to-face conversations, is it always necessary to disclose the nature of your affiliation to the topic (it may be in good taste, but it's probably not always natural)? When you're outside of work, should you still be held to company policy and procedures when you're having a few drinks with friends?
The truth is, social media is opening a whole new can of worms. Where we go from here...is anyone's guess. My two cents...it's s a slippery slope attempting to make humans act in unnatural ways when they are communicating in real-time instantaneous fashion.
Doug