Gagan Biyani of MobileCrunch describes how interns at PR firm Reverb Communications are paid to write 5-start reviews of games, on behalf of game publishers and developers who use Reverb as their public relations firm.
Astroturfing is nothing new; Microsoft uses it on and off, as do political parties. Entire magazines and sections of newspapers consist of editorial content written by ad firms.
What's new this decade is that the anonymous "wisdom of the crowds" -- crowdsourcing -- allows impostors to slip in more easily. What the public demands, however, is the ability to distinguish between fake and real reviews. Fortunately, blogs and other social media quickly get out the stories on these bad apples.
Although Reverb slyly attempts talk around what they do, Mr. Biyani details his procedure for determining which reviewed products were gamed in Cheating the App Store: PR firm has interns post positive reviews for clients.
Meanwhile, over at PRsarahevans.com, Sara Hevans affirms that most PR firms aren't like Reverb: Catch PR people doing something RIGHT!
Astroturfing is nothing new; Microsoft uses it on and off, as do political parties. Entire magazines and sections of newspapers consist of editorial content written by ad firms.
What's new this decade is that the anonymous "wisdom of the crowds" -- crowdsourcing -- allows impostors to slip in more easily. What the public demands, however, is the ability to distinguish between fake and real reviews. Fortunately, blogs and other social media quickly get out the stories on these bad apples.
Although Reverb slyly attempts talk around what they do, Mr. Biyani details his procedure for determining which reviewed products were gamed in Cheating the App Store: PR firm has interns post positive reviews for clients.
Meanwhile, over at PRsarahevans.com, Sara Hevans affirms that most PR firms aren't like Reverb: Catch PR people doing something RIGHT!
What they should write are the bad reviews. those are what people look at. "why is it bad?" here it is, but...
Posted by: Josh | Aug 27, 2009 at 09:33 PM