The new FTC guidelines actually go farther than just bloggers.  They also make celebrity endorsers disclose more explicitly the compensation they receive for flacking products:

Celebrity endorsers also are addressed in the revised Guides. [...] celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.

And the guidelines don’t stop there, either.  Also under FTC scrutiny is “word of mouth” marketing, which seems to imply that anyone in any context that receives some sort of material remuneration for talking about a product will come under the FTC’s jurisdiction:

These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.

Where does the FTC’s jurisdiction end?  If I get a free tube of toothpaste in the mail and say nice things about it on Twitter, Facebook, or in a PTA meeting, do I have to disclose it as a freebie or pay the $11,000 fine the FTC imposes?  What kind of disclosure can one fit into a 140-character Twitter message, anyway?

This is another in a line of paternalistic decisions on consumer product issues from the federal bureaucracy.  It treats blog readers like idiots who are in constant danger of brainwashing by bloggers.  American consumers are much brighter than the FTC assumes, but treating us like adults would not give them leverage to increase their power and their intrusiveness.

Don’t get me wrong.  If a blogger gets paid to write a review, the blogger should disclose it.  If the product comes free from the manufacturer, as a rule, that should also be disclosed.  However, that should also apply to the mainstream media as well as everyone else, but in the rational manner of audience credibility [...]

My BOLD highlights.

Good that at least celebrity endorsements are going to be subject to this to some extent, because as I previously wrote, the entire new legislation appeared as more of an exercise by big business (Old Media, etc. etc.) to beat up on the little guy (i.e. bloggers, small business, solopreneurs). Especially in regard to the even more questionable new Testimonial rules.

But will they require a large font disclosure of paid endorsement for TV ads? As in "Howie Long is being paid to talk about our product", etc.??

As is pointed out, when it gets to Word-of-mouth, is everyone potentially going to be both subject to the FTC rules, as well as spy/enforcer? Which is what has been worrying me more than anything else about this, the opening up of a whole new class of complaint, many of which will likely be frivolous, or placed by competitors. As if our society weren't litigious enough already.

And all of this for, as is rightly pointed out, a paternalistic overreach that treats consumers as hapless, and places additional burdens on small business. The best defense against this may well be a good offense, of proactively "overdisclosing" as John Chow is demonstrating here:

http://www.johnchow.com/about/my-disclosure-policy/