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Comments: 217 +- Apple: Gaming the App Store on Tuesday August 25, @05:25PM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday August 25, @05:25PM
from the burning-your-knees-on-astroturf dept.
from the burning-your-knees-on-astroturf dept.
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apple
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.'"
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Astroturf... (Score:5, Insightful)
When in doubt, lie, cheat, and steal. Strong ethics and morales will get you nowhere in this world kids.
Re:Astroturf... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Strong ethics and morales will get you nowhere in this world kids.
This appears to partially depend on (1) where you want to go and (2) what industry you are traveling in.
Sometimes, strong ethics and morals (not morales :) ) are necessary to get anywhere.
Re: (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 ra
Re:Astroturf... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sincerity is the secret to success.
Once you can fake that, you've got it made!
Parent
Re:Astroturf... (Score:5, Funny)
When in doubt, lie, cheat, and steal. Strong ethics and morales will get you nowhere in this world kids.
Yes, this is true. At Petroleum Conglomerate (R), a friendly family owned company I know of, they have the strongest ethics. I think they are a real model that other companies should follow, with a strong core of values and a clear mission to improve the world through intelligent energy solutions. This is in stark contrast to the public image some would have you believe. In fact, they have teamed with Tobacco International (R) and with Weapons Systems Technological (R) to donate a percent of their proceeds to charities. I even heard that they are all having a 20% off sale until the end of the month. I know I'm going to order some oil, smokes, and a STA missile right now! You should too! (Offer may not be valid in all areas.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Especially when it comes to advertising to isheep. These will eat up anything that will give them better social status, even if its just for a day and they can feel better then their other isheep cohorts.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Junk like this would be exposed in forum or low voted on popular download site/s.
Why, because the Apple community was so small and the number of developers tiny. Every app got used and people had time to reflect and share their thoughts.
On the phone side Apple is just Microsoft with better spin. The phone herd is ready for "bovine university". From the from the high-density forums to the one click profit profit floor.
It's not really a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Astroturf... (Score:5, Funny)
There is a movement in the PR Industry to end astroturfing. [thenewpr.com]
Man, the NewPR is great, iddn't it? It isn't utter crap like those other PR sites.
Parent
Not news (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:It could be illegal. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
so if lying is a 'stealth marketing technique' what is stealing? a 'stealth purchasing technique'? I mean, cmon, let's call a spade a spade here...
Re:Not news (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm... sounds like something that happened with L. Ron Hubbard's books and his followers.
Re:Not news (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently they started doing that in Feb 2009 [macrumors.com].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Amazon deletes legitimate unfavorable reviews. Why would you think they would care about the honesty of reviews? All they care about is sales. Fake positives are probably just fine with them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazon shouldn't restrict reviews. There's simply too many other places to buy books, music, appliances, etc etc and the reviews of those purchasers have the potential to be every bit as valid and useful as people who bought it directly from Amazon. Assuming that "didn't purchase from Amazon" means "didn't actually buy the product" is naive in that case.
Apple, on the other hand, I agree with you on. So long as their system is so locked down that you basically can't buy things anywhere but through them,
And we're giving them /. publicity why? (Score:3, Insightful)
seriously, what the hell?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
seriously, what the hell?
Do you suggest we pretend the evil people don't exist? I imagine the story is intended to out them as the scum they are, not give them publicity.
-Taylor
Re:And we're giving them /. publicity why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you suggest we pretend the evil people don't exist? I imagine the story is intended to out them as the scum they are, not give them publicity.
Trust me they are thrilled to get "bad" press like this. Anyone who hires spammers, SEO outfits, direct mail companies, shills and the like knows full well that these practices are objectionable to most of society. Picking one firm and giving them front page coverage, saying they're the worst of the worst, is just going to send hordes of unscrupulous paying clients to their doors.
Parent
Re:And we're giving them /. publicity why? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Rockband? (Score:3, Funny)
Who actually cares about the "good" ratings? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who actually cares about the "good" ratings? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
I do that as well. I'd rather hear what people don't like about a product I'm interested in than what I already know I'll like about it.
Re:Who actually cares about the "good" ratings? (Score:4, Funny)
But suppose an app were absolutely perfect. Then what happens?
To quote xkcd, "Somewhere out there is a company that has actually figured out how to enlarge penises, and it's helpless to reach potential customers."
Parent
Re:Who actually cares about the "good" ratings? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not so simple. The negative views could be given by people trolling for competitors.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I like to read some of the realistic sounding reviews at every level. The crazies go both ways, and as long as you can pick them out you can get a pretty good overview of the product.
As nerdy as it is, I think the real reviews of a product tend to make a normal distribution (bell curve).
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.
Parent
Modern snake oil salesman (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (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 tha
Amatuers (Score:3)
Far better than my idea. (Score:3, Funny)
At least they're not apping the game store. I'm still paying off my legal bills.
Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
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
How about negative reviews? (Score:4, Informative)
One thing I've noticed at the App Store is that a lot of perfectly fine apps get a lot of 1 star reviews for ridiculous reasons. For instance, a review might state that the app does what it claimed to do flawlessly, that it is useful, and the best app in the category--but the reviewer also wish it had feature X (which no other app has), and the reviewer then gives it just 1 star, apparently for this "missing" feature.
This doesn't appear to be an isolated problem. Nearly every very good app I've downloaded has had a lot of these kind of negative reviews.
I wonder if anyone is purposefully trying to game the store by posting negative reviews on competitors, too?
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.
Parent
Liars (Score:4, Insightful)
I flatly don't believe them.
Why would anybody hire them? Why would you believe and have dealings with a company whose product is explicitly stated as lying and deception?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you have a game that's good and garners decent amounts of attention then you'll make millions on the iPhone. Thus the PR firm - to make sure your product gets noticed.
Full disclosure I work for a game studio that's doing iPhone games. No we don't use a PR firm as our products are go
Yeah, but seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
So what is the value of a dollar? A beer? Nope. A newspaper? Not the New York Times. A pack of gum? Not the fancy "winter-blast" chiclet kind. A comic book? Not in years. Paperback book? Sure, if you can get seven more dollars. Let's see... that leaves us with a can of Coke (but not a bottle), or maybe a candy bar (but not the king sized kind).
But let's raise the stakes a little bit... what's the value of a dollar when you're stuck in an airport? Anyone? Anyone..? So if you can kill a four hour layover in an airport by spending $1 to download a "trivial airport game," I'd say that sounds like a marker for market success, not failure.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Right now, its getting me 28.38 THB or 0.58 EUR.
But in all seriousness the value of a dollar is relative. What you view to be worth a dollar may not be worth a dollar to another. Some people have skewed perceptions on what a dollar is worth and make some really bad purchasing decisions. This is normally indicated by the people who continually lack dollars.
Two dollar
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We do not have hundreds of accounts to âoetrawlâ through iTunes â" itâ(TM)s simply untrue. We have 10 staff members who choose to post on the games when and if they have played the game. We have to buy and play the game in order to have an opinion.
(We do not, however, deny crowdsourcing people with their own iTunes accounts and giving them the software free in exchange for a positive review. We just won't mention any such obvious possibilities.)
This same writer contacted several of our app store developers wanting negative comments from them regarding Reverb. They all gave positive feedback, but the writer left this aspect out of the story.
...because they're customers of the company, and of course they're happy, if it works, which doesn't cast any light on the scrupulousness or lack thereof of the whole operation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
3. 1 person=1 iTunes account=1 credit card. We do not have hundreds of accounts to âoetrawlâ through iTunes â" itâ(TM)s simply untrue. We have 10 staff members who choose to post on the games when and if they have played the game. We have to buy and play the game in order to have an opinion.
Yes, but this does not apply to free games. Anyone who knows jack about the AppStore knows that it is the free ("lite") versions of the games that really drive traffic and game popularity. That is w