Disclosing a penny for a blogger's thoughts

In its recent review of rules governing advertising endorsements and testimonials, the Federal Trade Commission cast a critical eye on the rapidly growing instance of bloggers reviewing products and services provided to them at no cost by public relations professionals and other product marketers, according to this blog posting. The practice sparked the proposal of new FTC guidelines that would require bloggers to disclose any exchange of value that results in editorial coverage, so that readers can assess for themselves the information's bias, accuracy, and usefulness.