Gaming the App Store 217
space_in_your_face writes "Want to boost the popularity of your latest iPhone app? Ask Reverb Communications! 'When it comes to winning in the App Store, this PR firm has discovered a dynamite strategy: throw ethics out the window. Reverb Communications, a PR firm that represents dozens of game publishers and developers, has managed to find astounding success on Apple's App Store for its clients. Among its various tactics? It hires a team of interns to trawl iTunes and other community forums posing as real users, and has them write positive reviews for their client's applications. ... Reverb claims that their clients have sold over $2 billion of product under their watch.'"
Yeah (Score:2, Interesting)
This will last.
We all know how Apple likes to have others in any sort of control over the App Store.
It could be illegal. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Among its various tactics? It hires a team of interns to trawl iTunes and other community forums posing as real users, and has them write positive reviews for their client's applications."
Just so we're all clear, this is already illegal. If they are engaging in this kind of activity, then it's just a law enforcement issue.
Re:Who actually cares about the "good" ratings? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not news (Score:5, Interesting)
I never got why amazon didn't limit reviews to people who had bought the book, (while it doesn't stop this it makes it a more costly business, I find it particularly surprising that a company with as much control over their system as apple don't limit reviews to app purchasers.
Re:Modern snake oil salesman (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming, though, a slightly more competent brand of shill, there isn't any magical "Critical thinking" that will allow you to distinguish between the real and the fake with any accuracy. You could fall back on the approach of just ignoring all feedback, and describing your nescience as "critical thinking"; but that just hands victory to the astroturfers.
If you are selling crap, you'd prefer to make it smell of roses; but, failing that, just making everybody believe that everything smells like crap works almost as well.
Astroturfers are often surprisingly artless(as when Sony's PSP astroturf domain wasn't even registered anonymously, WTF?); but a strategy that relies on them being universally or routinely so is deeply flawed. It's fun to play at(and where possible actually be) more of a tough minded critical thinker than the crowd; but it isn't actually a very good strategy.
Re:Astroturf... (Score:2, Interesting)
What's even funnier is that our cynicism ensures they will keep on doing business as usual. /metacynicism
Shrill Shills Thrills and Spills (Score:2, Interesting)
Internally it's called "viral marketing", (Score:5, Interesting)
and it's an old hat with pretty much every professional marketing company. Either employees are asked to post things, or they hire some external people, like in this example.
I have seen it, I have even been asked to do it*, and from what I know, it's pretty much an expected standard.
Music, games, books, websites, other products, you name it...
The only difference is, that real professional companies have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy about it, and the only person asking is your direct boss, in private.
___
* and lied about actually doing it, like most people in the company at that time, because half the staff just got fired because of management incompetence
Re:Astroturf... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, yes. There was corruption in government in the years 2001 to 2008. 1992 to 2000 and 2008-???, on the other hand, are free from corruption...
Anyway, politics aside; yes, the ability to fake ethics and morals works pretty well, I suppose. But morals and ethics definitely help when dealing with services. For example, if I run a home-computer-repair thing, I am guessing most of my customers are going to think much more highly of me if I am moral and ethical when I deal with them, try to get them good rates, etc. It may even improve my standing and gain more customers. "Hey, you can trust this guy, he's the real deal and helps a lot, but doesn't overcharge you like the Geek Squad."
That's just an example off the top of my head that I've had a small amount of experience with.
Re:Astroturf... (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it's a bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, a bunch of people who have bought your book, and would like to write about how much it stinks, can't. Because they bought it at a normal book store.
Re:Who actually cares about the "good" ratings? (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I find the 0 - 3 star ratings more telling about an app than the 4 or 5 star (fanboy) ratings. In general, when I want to find out about a product, I like to read the negative to moderate reviews because they seem to be more honest about potential problems. What do you guys think/do?
Some reviews are of a sort that you know the reviewer is simply happy to now own a program that does something in particular. They'll say something like: I LOVE Poker Player 2010 because I am now REALLY PLAYING POKER!!! These are generally useless. They offer no detail except the enthusiasm of the user for being able to actually use the program to get basic functionality out of it.
There's other reviews that you know are AstroTurf. You can usually tell that they are "on-message" and scripted. The features that they "love" are the same features that are bullet points in the literature released by the developer. Sometimes they even put in some "warnings" but these "caveats" aren't really caveats, but rather rephrases of the disclaimers that you could have read in the Terms of Service or EULA anyway. For example:
"This app is excellent in all possible ways, but in the interest of fairness I need to point out that, operating a vehicle while texting is bad!"
On the other hand, there are idiots out there who will cut down a perfectly functional app simply because they had expectations for the app that were completely out of scale with what was even advertised, or even supported. This often happens also when the users demand features that there was really no reason to expect there to be in the first place.
To get to the heart of the matter. Some people also feel the need to say something negative because they feel that they have to be "balanced". This sort of "balance" is not what you are looking for. You are looking for an approximation of the truth of people's experiences, not the image they are trying to present of their own fairness and sophistication.
Do NOT ignore the 5 star ratings, just because of enthusiasm and turfers out there. A good app is going to get 5 star ratings and it will deserve it. The idea that a middling rating implies a better quality review means you' are generally too lazy to read all the reviews and think about them. If you apply the right criteria and your own skepticism to all reviews, you will get the right balance out of them, no matter what the rating. Ignoring good reviews in favor of middling ones means that you are letting the star level rate your expectations just as much as if you blindly accepted the 5-star ratings.
In general, discard the astroturfers and perpetually angry fringe, and look for reviews that cover the functionality that you find important to you. Look for reviews that tell you what they did to get a certain result. I know of more than one cheap-ass app I have used in my life where if I used some obscure feature, it would crash, but as long as I never cared about that feature, the app worked beautifully for all I needed it to do. That app would certainly not be a 5-star, but it certainly might rate a 4-star from me if the rest of it was truly useful. More importantly, it was worth getting as long as I was aware of its Achilles' Heel.
Re:How about negative reviews? (Score:5, Interesting)
He'd reviewed 6 other competing apps, all of the reviews suggested that customers should buy this other app instead.
There's not much you can do about it, just have to hope that customers are savvy enough to see through these marketing tricks.
Re:Because it's a bad idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm... sounds like something that happened with L. Ron Hubbard's books and his followers.
Re:Astroturf... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I have a quality product and it was recognised as such by Apple who selected the app as the featured app in the App Store. This did more for my sales than spamming online forums etc.
Lesson: quality wins in the end.