IFB on Ethics

Independent Fashion Bloggers (IFB) is a website community dedicated to networking, connecting, and informing the many aspiring blog-to-business bloggers in this fast-growing industry. Regarding the business of blogging, IFB offers sections about advertising, monetizing, ethics, media, resources, and traffic information. IFB held a Fashion Blogger Conference in New York City in 2010, which discussed topics ranging from the nuances of fashion and style to the business ethics of fashion bloggers and other businesses, the latter of which IFB posted a video onto its Youtube channel and website; unfortunately, I cannot connect the video's direct link to this post and will thus have to share the link to the post made on IFB's site.

Among the many guest speakers was, surprisingly, Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of the New York Times who discussed one of the fashion blogging industry's most recurring controversial topic: businesses gifting products to bloggers for advertisement purposes. Hoyt discussed how in the journalism world (as apposed to the fashion magazine world), gifts of any kind cannot be allowed. However, according to the Federal Trade Commission's ruling, gifting is allowed as long as the blogger discloses the products as gifts, avoiding purposefully misleading the blogger's audience regarding the product and the relationship between the blogger and the business. Imran Amed of The Business of Fashion addresses the issue of both sides of the relationships--some bloggers may create great reviews just to receive gifts whereas, on the other end, some businesses contact bloggers and attempt bribing them for advertisement space. New but rising bloggers may fall prey to what seems, at first, like legitimate networking and business transactions; businesses oftentimes target these bloggers for easy and cheap advertisement space when sometimes, a blogger may not know that due to his or her some odd view count, she or he deserves "x" amount of money per review or per month for sidebar banner space (the details of which are covered in IFB's downloadable guideline).

My concern about any business to blog relationship regards not only this issue of "gifting" but also any request for advertisement in general. How can bloggers safeguard their sites while cautiously building up network opportunities with interested businesses? Anyone and any business can easily appear legitimate on the World Wide Web, and there are few safeguards and regulations for blogger to business relationships. In either case, the FTC's guidelines aren't mandated and will not have civil repercussions or penalties for either party in any unfortunate case of product misuse or relationship abuse. Perhaps it is the blogger's responsibility over what goes on his or her site and how he or she handles business, but the responsibility of practicing ethical business techniques also falls upon large companies, as addressed in SocialMedia.Org guidelines.