For a long time, now, the FTC has required marketers to inform their readers of any partiality (due to an affiliate relationship, for example) when they endorse a product.

Well, they have decided their rules aren’t stringent enough. Now, they want to make sure you don’t “bribe” people to be your ambassadors, by giving a reward for an endorsement or, in what amounts to the same thing, by withholding something until they do endorse you.

What constitutes an endorsement? Ah, that’s where they are enlarging the scope of their rules. They say that a “Like” on Facebook can be an endorsement. Do you use “Like gates”? That crosses a line. Why? Because the person liking you can’t disclose that they are receiving an incentive to press the “Like” button; Facebook doesn’t give them a way to disclose it.

Of course, Facebook, itself, ruled that it wouldn’t allow these incentives for Liking a Facebook page, too. As Tennessee Ernie Ford used to sing, “If the left one don’t get you then the right one will.”

You can learn more about these new FTC pronouncements in Wendy Davis’s article in : MediaPost’s column, The Daily Online Examiner here: Facebook ‘Likes’ And Pinterest Photos Can Be Endorsements, FTC Says.

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