Influx

Computer accessory company Belkin has just gotten busted for paying people to write positive product reviews. It’s clearly going to damage Belkin’s reputation for a few nanoseconds, but people quickly forget.

However, the biggest damage is likely to be to the whole area of customer reviews and especially for review sites like Yelp.

People are starting to rely heavily on customer reviews before they make important purchase decisions.Companies know this and are looking for ways to exploit the opportunity to their advantage.

The Belkin news, like the Yelp news that came out late last year, is going to make people more skeptical about reviews and lead to a continued erosion of confidence.

The consequence will be that for any website that hosts or uses users reviews is going to have to think long and hard about policies and policing.

Importantly, more than just thinking, they are going to need to find clever ways to implement and of course, make sure they communicate this to their users.

Posted by Ed Cotton