Cookies help us display personalized product recommendations and ensure you have great shopping experience.

By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    sales and data analytics
    How Data Analytics Improves Lead Management and Sales Results
    9 Min Read
    data analytics and truck accident claims
    How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
    7 Min Read
    predictive analytics for interior designers
    Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
    8 Min Read
    image fx (67)
    Improving LinkedIn Ad Strategies with Data Analytics
    9 Min Read
    big data and remote work
    Data Helps Speech-Language Pathologists Deliver Better Results
    6 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Payola? There’s An App For That!
Share
Notification
Font ResizerAa
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Big Data > Data Mining > Payola? There’s An App For That!
Business IntelligenceData Mining

Payola? There’s An App For That!

Daniel Tunkelang
Daniel Tunkelang
5 Min Read
SHARE

Remember a few months ago when there was a scandal about a Belkin employee paying people $0.65 per review to post 5-star reviews to Amazon?

Well, that was child’s play compared to what PR firm Reverb Communications has allegedly been doing for it clients. According to Gagan Biyani at  TechCrunch, Reverb hired interns to post positive review to Apple’s App Store for clients. Indeed, TechCrunch posted documentation obtained through an anonymous tipster, including the following:

Reverb employs a small team of interns who are focused on managing online message boards, writing influential game reviews, and keeping a gauge on the online communities. Reverb uses the interns as a sounding board to understand the new mediums where consumers are learning about products, hearing about hot new games and listen to the thoughts of our targeted audience. Reverb will use these interns on Developer Y products to post game reviews (written by Reverb staff members) ensuring the majority of the reviews will have the key messaging and talking points developed by the Reverb PR/marketing team.

What makes this story especially newsworthy is that Reverb’s client list includes some big …

More Read

Let your gray hair light your way through unfamiliar data
Le Plus Ca Change: Business Intelligence Evolves
Decision Services and designing for change
Could Twitter change customer service?
Flip that Data!

Remember a few months ago when there was a scandal about a Belkin employee paying people $0.65 per review to post 5-star reviews to Amazon?

Well, that was child’s play compared to what PR firm Reverb Communications has allegedly been doing for it clients. According to Gagan Biyani at  TechCrunch, Reverb hired interns to post positive review to Apple’s App Store for clients. Indeed, TechCrunch posted documentation obtained through an anonymous tipster, including the following:

Reverb employs a small team of interns who are focused on managing online message boards, writing influential game reviews, and keeping a gauge on the online communities. Reverb uses the interns as a sounding board to understand the new mediums where consumers are learning about products, hearing about hot new games and listen to the thoughts of our targeted audience. Reverb will use these interns on Developer Y products to post game reviews (written by Reverb staff members) ensuring the majority of the reviews will have the key messaging and talking points developed by the Reverb PR/marketing team.

What makes this story especially newsworthy is that Reverb’s client list includes some big names, such as Harmonix (i.e., Guitar Hero and Rock Band) and MTV Games.

Apparently the reviewer system isn’t entirely anonymous, so Biyani was able to look for patterns:

iTunes allows you to see other reviews posted by the same reviewer. So, we clicked on the reviewer “Vegas Bound” (iTunes link) and started to look at his reviews. He reviewed 7 applications, and gave each one of them 5 stars. Each review was short and sweet, and extremely positive. These reviews represented 6 different developers. A quick Google search revealed an infuriating truth: every single one of these developers was a client of one PR firm: Reverb Communications.

I can only hope that scandals like these will cause people to be more skeptical of reviews (or opinions in general) that come from anonymous or obfuscated sources. While most reviews are probably sincere, it doesn’t take much to erode public trust. Moreover, a few shill reviews can attract attention to a product, thus leading legitimate reviews to follow afterward. Where’s the harm? Products without those shill reviews are starved of the attention they might deserve. Money substitutes for authentic endorsement.

Our brave new world of social media makes it possible to truly democratize the sharing of knowledge and opinions. But gaming the system like this erodes the trust that is essential for this process to work–and thus devalues all of the information available to us online. The key enabler of such gaming is anonymity. Fortunately the miscreants do get caught on occasion. Hopefully we will learn from this experience and build more robust systems that aren’t so easily gamed. Transparency or FAIL.

Link to original post

Share This Article
Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

sales and data analytics
How Data Analytics Improves Lead Management and Sales Results
Analytics Big Data Exclusive
ai in marketing
How AI and Smart Platforms Improve Email Marketing
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive Marketing
AI Document Verification for Legal Firms: Importance & Top Tools
AI Document Verification for Legal Firms: Importance & Top Tools
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive
AI supply chain
AI Tools Are Strengthening Global Supply Chains
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive

Stay Connected

1.2kFollowersLike
33.7kFollowersFollow
222FollowersPin

You Might also Like

Graphing Considered Dangerous

2 Min Read

Looking Back on 2011: BI, Mobility and Collaboration

4 Min Read

Auto-correlation for time series analysis

2 Min Read

First Look – SAS Customer Intelligence

5 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

ai chatbot
The Art of Conversation: Enhancing Chatbots with Advanced AI Prompts
Chatbots
AI and chatbots
Chatbots and SEO: How Can Chatbots Improve Your SEO Ranking?
Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Exclusive

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?