Around a week ago, I wrote that the FTC was going to begin regulating social media advertising. Now that the online world has had time to cool down from the news, I decided to have a look around to see how people have been reacting.

Not surprisingly there is a divide amongst social media advertising experts. While there are certainly those for and against FTC regulations, I'm more interested in the reasons why. Then of course I'll provide my own reaction.

Richard O' Brien, vice president of American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) had this to say, "bloggers and other viral marketers will be discouraged from publishing content for fear of being held liable for any potentially misleading claim."

Nathania Johnson of SearchEngineWatch has some strong feelings on the matter, "The FTC should go back to elementary school. That's when kids learn that opinions are not true or false - only facts are. They even have homework assignments about it....For a government agency full of people staffed by politicians, going after bloggers for truthiness is like the pot calling the kettle black."

Danny Brown has a positive, and interesting out look about the situation, "The very fact that the FTC wants to step in and stop this kind of unethical and questionable consumer manipulation can only be a good thing. At least for the majority of those affected. Otherwise, doesn’t it just raise the question of what are you hiding?"

After reading numerous responses to the news, I still have the overall feelings that I had when first hearing the news. From a general, and broad point of view I'm still very much against the regulation. I don't feel quite as strongly as Nathania Johnson, but just the idea of the FTC scouring the internet like a police force just sits wrong with me.

I do see where Danny Brown is coming from though. If you're not doing anything wrong then you should have nothing to fear, right? Here's where it gets tricky to me. How will the FTC differentiate the blogs from the people reporting news or giving a serious product review? There is a difference. Is the FTC going to be savvy enough to tell that difference?

Obviously this has the potential to affect many of your WebProWorld members. I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to voice your opinion. Email inbox is open as always.

The ideas presented in the WebProWorld newsletter editor's note do not reflect the thoughts, and ideas of the WebProWorld community.

| JohnnyV |