It seems Big Brother may be coming to the Blogsphere. Proposed FTC guidelines can be found here. While existing FTC rules already ban deceptive and unfair business practices. These new proposed guidelines aim to clarify the law and for the first time, specifically include bloggers, which they define loosely as anyone writing a personal journal online.
 
If these guidelines are approved, bloggers will have to back up claims and disclose whether or not they are being compensated for what they say in their writings.
 
The  FTC does not currently specify how they plan to go about this, but they say they could order violators to stop and pay restitution to customers if found in breach of such trusts. It could also ask the Justice Department to sue for civil penalties.

Any type of blog could be scrutinized, not just ones that specialize in reviews. Even for example one line twitter posts are subject to these new guidelines. The FTC certainly will have a big job ahead of them as new communications channels continually emerge. Even advertisers now are paying some Twitter users to post tweets. 
 
The FTC says the guidelines would cover all such arrangements, regardless of the medium. The FTC commissioners will be voting on the final guidelines this summer.