This is good news. I think these changes will make your site much stronger and produce better reviews in the long term. I’ve updated the original post and written a new one to reflect the changes.

I see the nytimes link now. But it’s meaningless in relation to the question of whether bloggers should keep the merchandise because you elsewhere in the same faq suggest that it’s a “good idea” that companies gift the reviewed merchandise to the reviewing bloggers. If you really want the bloggers to follow those nytimes guidelines, you should require or strongly suggest that they not keep the reviewed products, as the nyt guidelines clearly require (see above quoted sections, among others).

You actually include support for keeping a reviewed item and a suggestion to follow the nyt guidlines in adjacent sentences in the linked faq above:

If the person sending you the product is letting you keep it using disclosure that is human readable, and using any google approved methods for advertising links is strongly suggested. We suggest that any bloggers who will be doing a reviews on regular or semi regular basis follow The New York Times Company Policy on Ethics in Journalism.

These two sentences together are plainly contradictory. You are saying that bloggers can keep the items they review and they should follow the nyt guidelines, which say that they cannot keep the items they review.

Likewise, you suggest disclosure but offer a sample disclosure that does not offer the key fact that the blogger has been gifted the item: “The John Smith Camera Company sent me their new ABC-123 DLSR camera to review.” That disclosure says nothing about keeping the item.

A proposal:

On the issue of fraud, I’ll be happy to edit my post to state clearly that this is not fraud if you edit the faq to make clear either 1) that a blogger should not keep the items that she reviews or 2) that any blogger who keeps a reviewed items should disclose in the review that she is keeping the item. This policy should be clearly stated and not contradicted elsewhere in the faq.

For example, you could add the following text to the end of the disclaimer faq:

If you keep the item you are reviewing, you should disclose that fact clearly in your review with a statement like: “The John Smith Camera Company sent me their new ABC-123 DLSR camera as a gift in return for this review.”

That’s not a lengthy or complicated disclosure, but it makes clear the fact that the company is paying the reviewer with in kind merchandise, which is the important background that the reader has to know to judge the review.

There selection process allows merchants to be somewhat selective with who reviews their products. This is built in so merchants don’t have to allow hate blogs or other objectionable material bloggers into the mix. Merchants are generally pretty open I’ve seen more then one occasion where bloggers with less than 20 subscribers were chosen.

Since most bloggers have never received products to review and probably aren’t going to make a habit of it, suggesting lengthy and complicated disclosures is overkill. For bloggers who engage in regular or semi regular reviews yes a different level of disclosure would be a good thing. Not sure why you can’t see the NYT link it’s there perhaps it’s cached on your computer

http://www.viralconversations.com/faq/#b8

You’re making quite a few assumptions about a system that you haven’t participated in any meaningful way. Since we’re recommending that bloggers be honest and disclose if they keep the item, I’m not sure what you’re basing your accusations of fraud upon.

Thanks for the response.

The problem with the bias is not that there’s a selection mechanism to pick out the biggest and best blogs. The problem is that it is the companies who are choosing which reviewers get the privilege to review them. To the degree that folks want that privilege (which is an assumption you are building your site upon), they will be encouraged to build reputations for writing favorable reviews. Their readers would ideally balance that incentive by encouraging them to write honest reviews, but without the reviewers telling their readers how they are qualifying and being compensated for the reviews, their readers don’t have all the relevant information to judge the quality of the reviews. So the incentives are all on the side of writing positive reviews.

This setup is not necessarily bad in its own right. If readers want to read reviews by folks picked and paid by the manufacturers to write positive reviews, that’s fine. It’s like reading product descriptions on manufacturer sites, which are useful in many ways, even if they are biased. The problem is that the readers are not being told how the reviews are being generated. Barring full disclosure of the nature of the relationship, readers think they are reading independent reviews of products. As far as I can tell, that’s the point of the site: to create positive grassroots buzz about the products through positive reviews in the apparently independent blogging community. But in the end, it’s a form of an astroturf campaign, because the reviewers are being paid with free products to write positive reviews.

I don’t see where you recommend that reviewers follow the nytimes journalistic guidelines (maybe privately or in the registration process?), but suggesting that companies gift products to reviewers directly contradicts guidelines #35, #36, and #79.

35. Staff members and those on assignment for us may not accept anything that could be construed as a payment for favorable coverage or for avoiding unfavorable coverage. They may not accept gifts, tickets, discounts, reimbursements or other benefits from individuals or organizations covered (or likely to be covered) by their newsroom. Gifts should be returned with a polite explanation; perishable gifts may instead be given to charity, also with a note to the donor. In either case the objective of the note is, in all politeness, to discourage future gifts.

36. Staff members and those on assignment for us may not accept employment or compensation of any sort from individuals or organizations who figure in coverage they are likely to provide, prepare or supervise. The senior executive of each newsroom may authorize reasonable exceptions (for example, to let a teacher work part time as a copy editor).

…

79. Photographers, camera operators, picture editors, film editors, art directors, lab personnel and technology editors and reporters may not accept gifts of equipment, programs or materials from manufacturers or vendors. They may not endorse equipment, programs or materials, or offer advice on product design. (This guideline is not meant to restrict our technical staff from working with vendors to improve our systems or equipment.)

There’s a quick fix to this problem, which is to require or at least strongly suggest that any blogger writing a review include a disclaimer that makes it clear 1) that he was chosen in a competitive process by the reviewed company, 2) that the company is giving him the product in return for writing the review, and 3) that he only posts positive reviews. The current suggested disclosure that “The John Smith Camera Company sent me their new ABC-123 DLSR camera to review” includes none of these key pieces of information.

With proper disclosure, there may be reason to complain about the usefulness of the site and the reviews it generates, but not the ethics of what it’s doing. I’m offering this as a serious proposal, not merely a rhetorical device.

I realize that a similar problem exists in existing mass media reviews, but that does not excuse taking the worst parts of a fraudulent system and exporting to the world of citizen media.

Thanks for stopping by my website and giving me the opportunity to address some of the issues that concern you. I’ll take them in the order you mention them.

>biased selection of reviewers

The purpose of the website is get a buzz going and let as many people know about a product as possible. Just as in the real world advertisers and PR people are more likely to give Oprah free merchandise for a review and less likely to give it to person who runs a public access channel show which airs at 2 am.

> Good and bad reviews

I’m not sure if you are aware but PC Magazine as well as many other electronics review publications won’t run a negative review. If a machine does that poorly in their tests they simply don’t publish the review. Secondly we hope that advertisers will use this feedback to improve their products.

>And what about a disclaimer from the blogger

We’ve recently updated this section, if a blogger does keep the item we recommend them putting a disclaimer up. For bloggers who plan on doing reviews regularly we suggest they use the NY Times journalistic guidelines as a starting point.

>review equivalent of link farming

we don’t require that bloggers link to the advertiser, they can do so on their own if they chose to. Again the recently updated FAQ suggests that if bloggers do keep the item they follow google’s guidelines as far as linking.

>legality of the TOS

I’m not a lawyer either, but if you’re going to pick on our TOS could you at least be fair and pick on everyone elses too

http://zi.ma/90b110

if you have any more questions please feel free to contact me at the email listed in this post.