A growing but controversial trend on the Internet is receiving a great deal of scrutiny from the government. The trend involves paid or sponsored endorsements, testimonials, and more on blogs and various social media sites. The Federal Trade Commission began investigating these practices earlier this year and announced it would release new rules and guidelines to update the current legislation.

As a result, marketers, advertisers, and bloggers alike are all raising concern. Is it necessary for the government to intervene? A problem does exist since consumers are directly affected by paid and sponsored posts, but is government regulation the answer?

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Twitter is reportedly releasing commercial accounts later this year. The accounts will be paid accounts specifically for businesses and will include statistics and analytics that are not currently offered.

The microblogging service has yet to make money, but will this new business product ultimately provide the monetization model that the company so desperately needs? Although details of the pending product are scarce, early speculation reveals concern.

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Where do you see the search industry heading in the future? SEOs and SEMs are notorious for asking this question, since the industry changes so rapidly. As a result of both user and technology advances, the industry must constantly be looking forward in order to be effective in current efforts.

Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts relates the Law of Accelerating Returns to the future of search. Humans think linearly and cannot, therefore, discern their placement on the earth at all times. As a result, the human perception of the future of technology is not entirely accurate. In other words, technology in the future will advance to a much greater level than what humans can currently comprehend.

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