The Blogonomics of Flogging Flackers

C:Net notes that the Federal Trade Commission is planning to crack down on flackers* - bloggers who review or promote products while earning freebies or payments:

The Associated Press reported Sunday.

This would, for the first time, bring bloggers under FTC guidelines that ban deceptive or unfair business practices.

"New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers--as well as the companies that compensate them--for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest," the article explained.

Good plan, and very necessary - a few bad apples can spoil trust across the blogosphere, and if it is stopped in its tracks a whole host of cheat-ecosystem behaviour is stopped in its tracks. As you can imagine, some are trying to obfuscate the issue (we wonder what their motives may be :

But some bloggers, the AP article mentioned, are concerned that the FTC's efforts could go too far, possibly generating probes into posts that were written without any compensation, and possibly leading bloggers to post with more restraint. And some believe it would be better if bloggers created their own standards based on niche and industry.

Then there's this: does the FTC realize just how many small-time bloggers are out there? Championing business ethics is a worthy goal, but, um, good luck getting much done when there are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there and new ones popping up more or less daily.

Yadda Yadda - this shows a misunderstanding of the blogonomics - blog readership follows a power law, a small number of blogs garner most of the traffic and most of the readers so there is a strong 80/20 - more like a 95/5 - split, ie they only really have to watch about 5% of the blogs to catch 95% of the material abuses.

By the way, Gawker points out that magazines do not have the same rules. Well, it wouldn't be hard to include them.....

*Strictly speaking a Flacker is a PR type schilling for money and a Shiller is a blogger flacking for freebies