 |
| Drink Me Five Stars |
 |
| Reviews my neighbor leaves behind |
User generated comments in product review in social commerce.
Amazon just quietly erased a million some product reviews written by persons paid to write a positive post. The cottage industry of bloggers offering book reviews for $ 25- $100 a pop are temporarily thwarted. Amazon deleted anyone who wrote these listings and gave five stars to novels they likely never read without warning. This is only the first phase in Amazon’s attempt to clean up a flawed premise that sales will generate the best to the top. A theory I equal to keep stirring the pot and the bones will pop up.
Amazon does not have an editing staff that checks how you review the latest ginzo knife. They have relied on consumers to honestly rate products and sellers. Amazon has a small staff that deletes obvious or reported spam posts and unrelated drabble. The reviews list in chronological order. A few enhancements to the system have been rolled out, but none so clearly (and silently as Amazon does not announce nor want to reveal future changes) will make the playing field level. No longer will posters ask for throngs to tag their product for a dollar. Amazon added “questions” and “rate the reviewer” type features that they hoped would make the system less “scammy.”
Durable goods, wholesale product manufacturers all started to realize that if they open a Facebook Page, or some industry website then ask people to like them no-one will come. However, if they offer prizes, incentives and money they can get an individual Facebook page that generates interest in their brand. Facebook has added so many bells and whistles using a Facebook page seems to also have lost its lightening as a method to connect with consumers.
A woman I know made a fortune selling Google page rank, she is one of many black hat SEO experts who touted herself as a marketing wizard. Google can now identify the thirty some methods used to game page rank and they are silently erasing websites that use the cheats from searches without any notice or recourse to “webowners”, or brands. She’s now selling IRS illegal tax credits knowing that her past associations are all crumbling. This same person rather maliciously posted reviews with intention to harm on Amazon as a regular course of entertainment. Seems all her reviews have now disappeared.
If reviews are merely a fringe portion of buyers (Reviews on Travelocity, Amazon, CNET, Epinions, Consumer Reports… gazillion other sites are less than .08% of purchasers) why do buyers even bother to read them? We are human, we care what others think.
How will all the information gathered, collected, graphed and monitored about us as individual consumers typing words on the internet be used in the future for brands?
What I want to know is how is this going to change how books are reviewed and rated in the future? What do you think?
7 comments:
Watch this space? It's going to be interesting to see how it pans out. Everything is in such flux these days, I'm barely even paying attention to what happens today. It's what happens next year I'm interested in, and of course, that's somewhat hazy right now!
Mhairi it is a landscape growing from ocean and lava. Amazon won't give away their plans or secrets, and a bevy of individuals will find new ways to rudder around the rules. Everything in the future is going to change.
I agree Caroline. Having worked in financial services, the goal of most corporations is to stay up with and once in a while ahead of the scammers. I applaud the effort to clean up product reviews. I hope it extends to books to eliminate the bogus 5-star, not to be confused with the genuine,(to raise rankings) and the bogus 1-star (to lower the ranking of a competitors work).
I think that'll make the review process more fair for a while, but sooner or later the ones who do it will find a way around the roadblocks. I get requests from people to write (good) reviews for books I've never read, and they don't care if I read it or not. They just want the good review. I'm sure with other products incentives will be offered in ways that aren't easily detectable. Unless the review is being given by a source I know to be unbiased, I take them with a grain of salt.
K Victoria Smith does apply to books today Amazon took down about 1 million reviews by anyone who was posted on blogs that offered reviews for a fee. The poster might have only done one or two paid reviews and twenty real ones but they all were erased. Bezos took the stance- It's our website and we gonna do what we want if you smell even a tiny bit like a burroweed we aren't going to ask or tell you just whoosh gone. They will take more down in days to come. This will change some book ratings next week
Madison Woods you are right they will sign up for new accounts and start all over. But they will have low rankings as reviewers and few numbers. nothing too good or too bad lasts too long
So does that mean I won't have to send the $25 for a review for Angel?
Kidding.
I'm hopeful that the review thing gets cleaned up, so people can have a fair sense of whether a book is dung or platinum. Still, in the end, I've read books with many dozens of 5 star reviews that are barely coherent gibberish, so there's no telling what you're getting until you read. I have begun actually reading the sample chapters Amazon allows you to before I'll buy anything - I can generally tell within a few pages whether the author has chops, or is not up to the task. That and the cover generally give me enough to make an educated purchase. Also, if I recognize the reviewers from Twitter my confidence level goes way up. Great blog, as always.
Post a Comment