Answer: Astrosurfing, a growing practice in which employees pose as independent consumers to post positive reviews and commentary to Web sites and Internet message boards about their own company.
In the article "Charges Settled Over Fake Reviews on iTunes" published in The New York Times, Miguel Helft wrote "Discerning Internet users know that glowing online reviews of things like books or restaurants cannot always be trusted. But federal regulators are serving notice that if you stand to gain financially from the review you are writing, you should be upfront about it."
The article refers to a California marketing company which settled charges that it engaged in deceptive advertising by having its employees write and post positive reviews of clients' games in the Apple iTunes Store, without disclosing that they were being paid to do so. The reviews were posted under account names that would give readers the impression that they had been placed by ordinary consumers.
But by now you know (or you should) the web is filled with fake reviews. Some of them are clever and may not be easy to figure out. However others are so ridiculous that are an insult to the reader.
I had fun the other day watching a weight loss TV advertisement. You see this image all the time: an overweight person uses the company's product and loses an enviable amount of weight in less time than humanly possible. However, this particular image was so terrible that whoever faked it must have been a first-time user of an image-editing program. Before and after side views of the miraculous guy showed not only he lost stomach but also head volume in the same proportion. Yes, this was a TV paid advertisement. C'mon, if you are spending money on advertisement tricks at least do a good job. I thought the insult to people's intelligence was worse than the deception itself.
And what about these men and women who build fantastic bodies while trying the latest gym gear? Were these supermen out of shape before testing them or did they sculpt these amazing bodies while living in the gym 24/7 for the last 14 years?
As in many other fields, the dating world has its own fake reviews too. I believe they tend to be a little smarter and not so obvious, though. Happy couples, people who date by the dozens without any effort, newly launched sites enjoying thousands and even millions of members from the get go, and so on. One major complain about dating sites besides the huge amount of fake profiles, is that employees acting as real members, write messages to other members to make them believe they are getting hit or that they caught someone's attention. Not all these tricks may be classified under the same category, but one thing is clear: Astrosurfing is here to stay.
But let's finish this article with a positive note. It is also fair to say that many of the reviews are real and many online dating sites are excellent tools for people to find their partners. Not Astrosurfing here, but I'm happily one of them.
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