Today the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) announced that it extend its remit to cover “marketing communications in other non-paid-for space under their control, such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter”. The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has decided to extend the digital remit of the ASA and has today published a document detailing the new remit and sanctions.
I have some serious and personal concerns about the document. In justifying the extension of its remit ASA refers to 3,500 complaints in 2008 and 2009 about the content of organisation’s websites. How does this relate to social networks or social media? Throughout the document there is constant reference to “other marketing communication” (sixteen times on 14 pages) with only a very loose definition of what constitutes “other marketing communication” suggesting that it is concerned principally with the primary intention “to sell something”. Marketing communications is so much broader than that.
The plan is to carry out a review of guidelines in 2013, two years after the implementation of the extended remit. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding and disregard for the speed of change on-line; for example in two years Twitter went from zero to 10 million tweets per day. Spotify, which is fundamentally changing the music business, is less than two years old.
There is also a contradiction in terms of definition. The guidelines exclude “press releases and other public relations material” and yet the definition of “other marketing communications” includes items that could be considered to be public relations material, for example the promotion of unsolicited (or solicited) consumer endorsement.
I would endorse all of the objectives of the CAP code with regard to the prohibition of misleading advertising, the protection of children and social responsibility. The intentions here are good there is no doubt of that. I just can’t help feeling that in regulating the social media space, bodies that concern themselves with advertising and have advertising in their title feel more than a little out-of-place.
If more proof were needed of the growing power of social networks it came with the news that the new UK prime minister David Cameron met this morning with Facebook head honcho Mark Zuckerberg at 10 Downing Street.
It may be the number one social network on the planet and the second most visited site after Google but it misses the number one spot on our list of web wonders from the last decade.
Is the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales using his opposition to social networks as a way of building his own profile? Archbishop Vincent Nichols has argued that MySpace and Facebook are the basis of ”transient” friendships and can be a factor in suicide among young people as a result of relationships which have collapsed. The truth is that young people are vulnerable to relationship issues wherever and however they occur. 
The short answer is yes he does and this weekend his cover has been blown. A few days ago his public twitter profile
The term cybersquatting was coined when websites first became publicy available. People would buy domain names using company or brand names or the names of celebrities and then try to flog them back at inflated prices. A similar thing is now happening in social networks but potentially the outcomes are far more damaging.
I have read a couple of posts recently by leading PR evangelists talking in disparaging terms about ‘pimping’ blogs in social networks. It seems that it is unseemly to post too many links to your own scribblings in twitter and elsewhere.
