Social Business GM, Sarah Carter contemplates commentary on liking and endorsements from the FINRA AdReg conference..
The rate of change on social networks and new features that might impact regulated users is always a great topic for conversation. And that topic was turned to several times here at the FINRA Advertising Regulation conference in Washington this week. In both social media compliance sessions and also the general session Q&A, attendees from the member firms wanted clarification on how FINRA views a couple of key elements of the social networks.
The first raised was LinkedIn endorsements – and you can read more about that feature here on LinkedIn’s blog. This new feature, launched during September of this year, has caused more than a little consternation amongst the regulated sector. In a previous blog entry, I noted how you might control and manage this. In one of the social media compliance session, Amy Sochard confirmed that these endorsements are indeed a testimonial if its referring to their skill as a broker.
We’ve also just touched on whether the use of the button on Facebook, which of course you need to do in order to follow a page -whether that’s a corporate or a business person page – means that you’re endorsing that page or adopting its content. No, is the answer. But that no comes with a comment – if you then go and like the comment (and this is the example from the conference) “Tom Pappas is best best rep in the world”, then of course that changes the rules, and that would be adoption of the content. And yes, that would be a problem.
It’s great to see more clarity from FINRA, and its great to see some of the folks up on stage – from Tom Pappas, Amy Sochard and Joe Price showing understanding not just of the challenges of social, but also why and how folks are using social media.
What were your thoughts on AdReg this year?
