FTC to Require Bloggers to Disclose Payments or Freebies for Endorsements

The Federal Trade Commission published its final guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials on Monday, and under the revisions, the FTC will for the first time attempt to regulate blogging. 

Under the new guides, Bloggers must disclose any payments or in-kind donations (i.e., freebies) they receive in exchange for reviewing a product or service. 

These changes mark the first revisions to the guides since 1980, and they become effective December 1, 2009.

The text of the Federal Register notice can be found here, and you can read the FTC's news release here.

This source points out that the new guides will apply to social networking sites, such as Facebook fan pages.