Newhouse Social Media // Curated by colleagues from the 2012 MAYmester PRL530 Social Media for Public Relations class in the Public Relations Master's Program at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University.
I thought that today’s lecture about the FTC and social media was very interesting. It’s crazy how everything in this country has to be regulated, that people don’t do the right thing unless they are told what exactly that is. I really liked Zappos policy of, “be real and use your best judgment.” It seems as though Zappos is doing two things with this policy, they are telling the public that they trust their employees and they are also in a way mocking the system. As much as I think it is ridiculous that everything we do needs to be monitored, you can’t help but worry. We live in a society where Kim Kardashian’s tweets have been deemed worth as much as $10,000 of sales. With this many people following the advice of celebrities and other bloggers some sort of regulations need to be made.
The unanswered question is: How do we regulate them? Is it possible to come up with a good solid set of regulations that cover all social media or can they only be made one medium at a time… until the next big thing comes along and they have to be created all over again.
Takeaway From Today's Lecture: I am really amazed by the limitations that I wasn't aware even existed in the blogging/social media world. I always see celebrities and company's using Twitter and blogs to promote their products but never really considered the legal implications behind "endorsements" and product reviews, etc. The thing that stuck out the most to me was regarding the question I asked about Twittering as an employee, but not during work hours and not specifically asked to do so by the employer. I am amazed that (technically, according to the guidelines) an employee working at a Burger King drive-thru cannot tweet about how much he or she loves Whoppers without stating that they are an employee of the company! That just blows my mind because it is something I would never expect.
Questions Remain: If the above information about employees being technically regarded as "spokespersons" for their company in the blogging world is true, then if a CEO of a company (as I have seen before) tweets about a great new product from the company, are they held to the same guidelines? Since they are technically also employees of the company, do they need to indicate on each of these tweets that they are an employee, or is the public knowledge of them as a CEO enough? Does it matter if their profile says 'CEO of ...' or do they need to indicate that directly on the post?
The most important thing I learned today is that there are so many regulations about advertisisng through social media. I'll definitely have to pay attention in the future when I'm using social media to promote things.
But how strict are these regulations going to get? At some point will these regulations infringe on free speech?
Most important thing I learned: When in doubt--Disclose it! Better to be safe than sorry... Question: For big celebs who do post Tweets now without disclosing that it is an endorsement, will old posts come back to bite them in the ass when the FTC does begin to regulate this medium?
