A couple of additional points I would make:

People should recognize a disclosure as a disclosure. I adhere to the grandma test. If your grandmother were viewing this post, would she understand where the disclosure was? Would she understand what was being disclosed and why? We all appreciate the brevity of 140 characters but sometimes a hashtag just doesnt make it clear whats going on. CMP.ly and DisclzMe both offer free links people can use that flesh out just why a disclosure is being made ( http://disclz.com/free-of-charge/ )

If youre going to err, err on the side of transparency. If you even have to ask yourself, should I disclose this? that should be signal enough that you ought to disclose it.

You may not have a material connection at the moment, but if you think there may be one in the future, that ought to be disclosed. For instance, you may just be a fan of Toyota but if youve also been pitching their ad department to make some placements or to sponsor your blog that should be revealed to the readers.

Thanks for summarizing our discussion. There is still a lot of confusion around disclosures and discussions like this are critically important for the community. In addition to @justicefergie contributing to this discussion, Mary Engle flew in on Monday to host another discussion on the topic.

I think it is important to point out that advertisers (and as a result their agencies) are responsible for disclosures under their social media initiatives. The FTC has defined this as 1) leading the conversation about disclosures, 2) creating a formal disclosure policy and documenting best practices and 3) monitoring campaigns for disclosures.

Also, although it is not specifically required under the FTC guidelines, we have advocated the use of disclosure where no material connection exists – in the interest of openness and transparency. An inclusion of a clear and conspicuous statement of no connection speaks more clearly and credibly than an omission of disclosure of certain posts.

In full disclosure, I am a co-founder at CMP.ly, where we have developed a flexible solution to automate all of the above steps for advertisers in a documented framework along with our free standard (and tweetable) codes for disclosure.

Tom

Cheers!