The Application Review Problem

Posted by Nick O'Neill on April 3rd, 2008 3:14 PM

Duncan Riley wrote a post earlier today about Slide posting fake positive reviews on their own application. This has become a standard practice nowadays by companies. This problem happens time and time again when you set up any sort of review system. Even on this blog, I have application reviews. It’s pretty obvious who’s voting when immediately after I post an application review and there are suddenly 5 perfect reviews within minutes.

There is also the problem of application reviews being used as spam. Just take a look at the reviews below for Funwall. Two of the four reviews in the screenshot are spam. I’ve spoken with a number of developers about this and ultimately they don’t mind the spam because the spammers are posting positive reviews which in turn are boosting their rating. So what should be done about this?

Considering that there are countless reviews posted everyday it is extremely challenging for Facebook to filter all of their reviews. That’s why they have added the “report” link. An automated algorithm can then be used to determine whether a review is real or Fake. Even with the algorithm it can be challenging to determine what’s real or fake. I have seen people purposely post negative reviews in order to build up their own overall standing.

While this doesn’t make much sense, it does to whoever is participating in such activities. The unanswered question is: are application reviews an effective system? Is it possible to avoid spam and unethical ratings?

Funwall reviews Screenshot

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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David 4 months ago 1 point
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If Facebook made it easier for developers to make it easy for users to post a review (i.e. providing a fb tag that will lead to a "review this application" popup box, rather than having to link people to the application homepage) - then there would be more legitimate reviews, so the spam and fake reviews would have less impact.

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Grant Brown 4 months ago 1 point
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I agree with your idea. That would make it easier and allow for more legitimate reviews rather than spamming.

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http://mynaym.com

Lina De Martinez 4 months ago 1 point
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Nick -

I am thinking it might be interesting to do a follow up article on the comments included in the original article:

Slide caught posting fake positive reviews for their own app
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/03/slide-caug...

This is but the tip of the iceberg... and no one seems to understand what is going on REALLY. Starting with information being posted by bloggers - followed by the absolute lack of coverage by traditional media - it is no wonder that users are so clueless at to the real dangers lurking behind these Social Networks.

What is the New York Times doing research on? Let´s take a look...

Slide Slides Into Some Cash
January 18, 2008 - 2:25 pm
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/slide-...

Not enough? Let´s see if this video seems familiar...

Rich Media, Poor Democracy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfRXaORNSK8&...

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