Last night I attended the Social Media Club “Talking About Disclosure” roundtable discussion, which took place in the CNET headquarters in San Francisco.
The discussion was on the issue of disclosure on social media content (blogs, podcasts etc), especially in the light of issues surrounding Edelman and their Wal-Marting Across America campaign and other recent controversy surrounding Pay-Per-Post blogging.
In attendance was yours truly along with Tantek Celik (Technorati), Mike Arrington (Tech Crunch), Brian Solis (FutureWorks PR), Shannon Clark (JigZaw), CNET folks and a few others.
Overall, the discussions were very interesting and even a little lively at some points, but its great to have such engaged group of people discussing and addressing this topic. Kristi Wells have Fickr Photos here.
Quickie Notes from the Roundtable
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General Discussions
- Old Dot-Com: 3Cs of Content, Commerce and Community
- New Dot-Com: 3Ts of Truthfulness, Transparency and Trust
- Learning from the Edelman and Walmart scenario:
- Do immediate acknowledge that there are issues and investigations are underway
- Try not to keep silent for days while waiting for internal investigations to be completed
- Everyone agreed that publishers (bloggers, podcasters) have a duty to disclose, but to what extent?
- Disclosure on reviewing a product/service/company that your friend works for?
- How good of a friend?
- Retroactive disclosure: if you invest in a company you posted about 6 months ago?
- If you heard about the company over a free drink?
- The Audience (Blog readers) and active reading responsibility.
- Just like any media (newspapers to radios), to what extent should readers fall under Caveat Emptor when reading blogs?
- How can blog readers (especially those new to blogs) discern how and if a blog is credible?
Next Steps for the Social Media Club
SMC to push for Greater Media Literacy for both bloggers and the audience:
- Open guideline system (wiki as Tantek suggested) to both educate:
- The Bloggers on “blogger ethics” and proper disclosure
- The Audience on understanding how to better discern
Building a Common Blogging Ethics Document
- Draft a Blogging Ethics Guidelines setting down strong, but common values and guidelines
- Discuss what happens when a blogger who claims to uphold the guidelines violate it (Similar to Edelman violation of WOMMA guidelines)
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Great insights shared tonight Daniel - thanks for joining us and adding your perspective to the mix. The wiki is up online at http://wiki.socialmediaclub.org/ but needs some TLC.
Daniel, thanks for blogging this.
I’ve started a wiki page for info about the meeting: SanFranciscoMeeting20061025 on the Socialmediaclub pbwiki. Please feel free to add more to the wiki. Thanks!
Tantek
Wow, I need a better calender. I totally did not realize that this had taken place. Thanks for the quick recap, and Tantek, thanks for the link to the wiki info about the meeting.
Daniel, sorry I missed you at the Blogger Happy Hour on Friday. But maybe I’ll bet to meet you tonight at the SF Tech Session on Social Bookmarking: http://sftechsessions.com/2006/10/social-bookmarking/. If you’ll be attending, drop me a line on my blog post: http://www.thatgirlfrommarketing.com/attending-social-bookmarking-at-sftechsessions.htm