As active proponents of disclosure in blogging, we've been thinking about the need for disclosure on Twitter for a while. Our interest took on a new sense of urgency nearly two months ago, when the FTC announced new guidelines that cast bloggers as endorsers of products who had to disclose any material relationships with companies they worked with. (Our only link to companies is and always has been their provision of products for our review, which we do not keep unless we pay for them.)

But as the December 1 deadline for full disclosure of material relationships by bloggers and social media users draws near, we have yet to see a coherent and sufficiently versatile method for including material disclosures in tweets. So we developed one, and have solicited feedback from some of the best folks in PR, marketing, and integrity-driven blogging we know.

We'd like to formally announce the launch of discl.us, which promotes the use of a single hashtag, #discl, with a set of five symbols that can be used to disclose each of the major material relationships we are aware of:

1. direct payment ($),


2. affiliate sales (%),


3. unrelated gifts (&),


4. product samples (~), and


5. consumable product (<).

(The second, fourth, and fifth items in that list are the disclosures we might use at any given time.)

As we wrote on the project site:

A few Twitter users have adopted hashtags like #sponsored and #ad to indicate when their content has a commercial interest behind it, and we think that's a great start. But there are a variety of reasons a tweet might need some disclosure, and we think discl.us offers a healthy solution: A Creative Commons-style menu of disclosure options that allow users to declare specific types of relationships.

Doing so ensures that disclosed tweets are not met with blanket skepticism, but an appreciation for how a specific relationship a Twitter user has with a company might or might not affect the tweet's meaning.

Making a disclosure with our method is simple: To disclose that your tweet about a Tonka truck was part of a paid campaign by Mattel and that they sent you a truck that you gave to your son, for example, you'd use the hashtag #discl$~. To tell your followers that you had received free samples of the chocolate you're raving about, you'd use #discl<. To disclose tweets during a Wii-themed slumber party you were sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to attend, you'd use #discl&. Unlike a generic disclosure hashtag, there is the chance that the details of a disclosure may be missed, but we think Creative Commons licensing has proven that the capacity to pick these things up quickly is there, if there's a reason to learn them. Also, the #discl foundation of the hashtag makes it unlikely that anyone will not get the general idea, even if they haven't familiarized themselves with the specific symbols.

Other models for Twitter disclosure may emerge in the days and weeks to come, and there may be arguments for singular hashtags like #ad. We are looking at this primarily from the perspective of bloggers and social media users who want to serve their readers with the integrity and transparency they deserve, and believe that different kinds of relationships not only merit different types of disclosure, but that FTC guidelines recommend it. We look forward to engaging with others who have diverse perspectives on this issue, and see discl.us as an opening volley in a conversation that has been a long time coming.

You can learn more about this simple system of hashtags and how you can help spread the word and encourage Twitter disclosure at discl.us. We welcome your thoughts, insights, and ideas as well - just follow us on Twitter @disclus to start the conversation.