A popular topic at Blogworld this year was the upcoming FTC regulations on sponsored conversations. Jeremiah Owyang led a passionate group of panelists discussing the repercussions of the FTC regulations.

For those of you who aren’t aware, the FTC issued very controversial guidelines for bloggers that forced them to disclose any sponsored conversation that happens under their direction, effective December 2009.

Primarily two issues have bloggers up in arms:

(1) The lack of clarity in defining a sponsored conversation

• a. This could included anything from tradeshow swag to free T-shirts. Every tweet, status update, and post ought to include a disclaimer of some sort that indicates a conversation was sponsored, regardless of whether or not you would have written about that product anyway.

• b. Literally, anything can be a sponsored conversation: a tweet, a status update, a comment, and most certainly a blog post.

(2) The double standard that exists when compared with how Traditional media operates

• a. pay to play has existed in Radio, Television, and Print for a very long time.

• b. celebrities endorse products all the time without disclosing whether or not they were paid to do so

Jeremiah asked the crowd to raise their hands if they were in support of sponsored conversations. To my surprise, over 60% of the room raised their hand; which is an evident switch from years passed. Bloggers have always maintained their unique value proposition was staying above the fray, and not muddying the waters of advertising and editorial. We are seeing the tides changing a bit; and bloggers seem to be comfortable with disclosing their monetary motivation for running a blog.

The increasing shift in bloggers making money from their work, certainly makes this conversation more pertinent.

The general consensus was that the FTC will never be able to police the use of sponsored conversations in blogging. The new law become more of a gesture, than an iron fist; yet pro-bloggers still need to think about what their disclaimer and disclosures read.

The IAB is not happy about the new regulations and plans to lead a movement to appeal the FTC decision.

Personally, I think this is a classic case of government overstepping their boundaries and sticking their nose where they don’t belong. But, what do you think? Are the FTC regulations good or bad for blogging? What do you plan to do differently in 2010 as a result of this?

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While most of the sessions at Blogworld inspired me to *think*, there was one session in particular, led by Robert Scoble, that gave me a glimpse into Twitter’s crystal ball.

In the middle of a session dedicated to “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Social Media;” Scoble got sidetracked. Somehow the audience convinced him to pull up his ‘list-enabled’ Twitter account. ‘Lists’ are a new feature that Twitter is beta testing on selected accounts. I didn’t get the power of the lists feature by reading Mashable’s post; it took seeing the new feature in real life for me to clearly understand the value.

Robert was clearly excited.

He told us he spent the last 10 hours sorting the 5,000 people he follows into 20 separate lists, that people can then search and subscribe to. Moreover, lists are built right into Twitter’s platform. Users can clearly see how many lists they are included in, which acts as a credibility (or popularity) indicator for the entire community.

The theory goes, the more lists that link to you, the more credible and powerful your voice is.

One of the audience members in the session aptly pointed out in the Q&A that this new feature will completely replace groups. 3rd party apps like TweetDeck will simply support Twitter lists feature, and do away with groups altogether. This way your lists are completely in sync across mobile, web, and 3rd party apps.

Scoble predicted this will be the most significant change in Twitter since it’s inception 3 years ago. He predicts there will be a virtual land grab, and suggested user lists created by all of us will be the real estate we all get greedy for.

It’s time to start thinking about curating lists of influencers, if you haven’t already. Game on.

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As a member of the blogging community, I wanted to go last year, but I was attending to the newest member of the Browne family at the time, @EmmaBrowne.

This is my first year at BlogWorld at I am really looking forward to see:
* State of the Blogosphere by @Jalichandra
* How to Work with Big Brands and Not Get Treated Like Just a “Mommy” by panel
* The Blog as a Community Spring Board by panel

The primary blogs I maintain are SDBloggers.com and MattBrowne.com. Although, I have my hand in as many as 100 blogs and subsequent strategies. As much as I will be going to keep my blogging skills sharp, I will be attending the show to network with all of the great personalities in New Media.

If you would like to meet up, text me 619.940.6262 or drop me a line on Twitter @sdMatt.

Hope to see you in Vegas!

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