Watch Your Step on Facebook

Since the days when snake oil salesmen peddled their dubious unguents to ailing laborers, some manufacturers have made a decent living off the hopes and frailties of the public.

Today I wonder: Could those salesmen have sold more snake oil with the help of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites? Some might say the ubiquity of Facebook, et al, would keep in check today’s versions of snake oil salesmen — that the vast community of social media users would ferret out the hucksters and drive them out of business. And yet, every morning I find gobs of spam hocking all manner of bogus medical miracle (go ahead, let your mind wander). Where there’s a pain point, there’s always a salesman bearing solutions, from your inbox to the new frontier of social media.

For the manufacturers that cook up these concoctions — and even for legitimate businesses — Facebook and other upstart mass-communication channels must have felt for some time now like a swimming pool without a lifeguard. Product companies could shout and splash to their heart’s content, outside the reach of regulatory bodies that govern more traditional outlets such as TV, radio, and print advertising.

Now, the powers that be have put a lifeguard in the chair.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration, created to safeguard the American consumer, regulate various industries and vet marketing claims to ensure truth in advertising. Earlier this year, the FTC said it would review its guidelines and enforcement policies with an eye toward regulating social networks. A Forbes article reported on the new marketing policy:

The FTC is planning to hold marketers liable for false statements published on blogs and social networks — meaning companies or bloggers could get sued for saying a product was good if it really wasn’t.

More recently, the FDA served notice that it will more closely scrutinize the Facebook and social networking activities of manufacturers in the heavily regulated pharmaceutical and life sciences industries.

In a recent letter to drugmaker Novartis, the FDA took issue with the website Novartis maintains for its leukemia drug, Tasigna. The letter reveals that the FDA has been watching Facebook activity: “This website contains a ‘Facebook Share’ social media widget that generates Novartis-created information for Tasigna that can be shared with Facebook users (i.e., “shared content”),” the letter reads. “The shared content is misleading because it makes representations about the efficacy of Tasigna but fails to communicate any risk information associated with the use of this drug.”

Regulators in the United Kingdom are moving in much the same direction, as its Advertising Standards Authority announced in March that it would expand its scope to include advertising on social media sites.

In short, manufacturers should no longer consider Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or any other social networking or communication channel to be a free swim when it comes to customer outreach.

The lifeguard is on duty.