
Why Amazon Vine is a Threat Worth Talking About - jbischke
http://jonbischke.com/2009/06/12/why-amazon-vine-is-a-threat-worth-talking-about/
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jrockway
I think the problem is that a lot of people misuse reviews. When I read Amazon
or Yelp ratings, I rarely look at how many stars something has. People add or
subtract stars for reasons that don't make sense and don't mean anything. I
have seen 3-star reviews on Yelp with the text, "This is the best food I've
ever had in my life, the service was amazing, and it was cheap." Why that is
not 5 stars is beyond me, but it's the Internet... and people are weird.

When looking at reviews, I read the content of the review to see if what upset
the reviewer would also upset me. (I was looking for dentists on Yelp the
other day, and saw a review that was something along the lines of "My
insurance wouldn't pay the claim, so they made me pay!! Bastards!!". Although
that one star review brought down the overall rating of the business, it is a
problem with the review, not with the business. The review was for his
insurance company, not for the dentist.)

Similarly, I read glowing reviews and look for the parts I care about. If I'm
reading a review of a digital camera, I really don't care if the reviewer
thought it looked nice or that the box was pretty, I care how long it takes
from the time I turn the power switch on to when I can take the first picture.
Obviously the reviewer could lie about this, but I've never seen it happen.

So, you get out what you put in. If you just look at the stars, you could
probably save yourself a lot of time by flipping a coin.

~~~
jbischke
I do the same. But many people don't have the same level of sophistication or
simply don't have the time to spend so they just look at the aggregate review
and buy the top-rated product. That why I think Vine is potentially
subversive.

I'd love to see Amazon reviews have a HN/Reddit/Digg-style up/down vote system
where crap reviews automatically drop off and aren't factored into the overall
score.

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quizbiz
It is awfully tempting to start reviewing products with glowing praise in
hopes that you will soon start getting free stuff in the mail.

~~~
potatolicious
Not to mention, if I receive something for free my opinion of it is likely
higher than if I paid for it.

Case in point: the Motorola RAZR that I inherited a while back. It's a solid
enough phone, got the right features, and for _free_ it's very damned good!

But charge me $100 for it and watch my review go the other way.

Even without the arguably malevolent notion of positive-reviews-for-more-swag,
the mere fact of receiving something for free likely induces a more positive
review.

~~~
jbischke
Yeah, I was looking at ~$250 products that had tons of Vine reviews. If you're
getting something worth $250 free to keep I gotta thing that's going to affect
how you review it.

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jlees
The point about Amazon Vine is you have to review X products to get more.

So if I've got four books already that I haven't gotten around to reading, and
a new one pops up in the newsletter that genuinely sounds worth reading, I'll
pop on over to one of the four I have and write a completely fictional review
for it based roughly around what everyone else is saying and the book's
description.

This enables me to get as much free stuff as possible without reading books
that turn out to be nothing like their descriptions. And it's people like me
doing this that contribute to the immense Vine bias.

I have read bad books on Vine and reviewed them, I've also read some really
good ones, but half the time it's all complete fiction so I can get as much
free stuff as possible.

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smwhreyebelong
I think the community will auto-correct and weed out the reviewers who are not
sincere. For example, if a user buys something based on Amazon reviews (of a
Vine member, say), and discovers that the review was insincere, he/she will
most likely go to Amazon and give a negative rating to the member/particular
review, which will probably feed back into the Vine members reputation, which
will in turn be used to determine eligibility for the Vine program.

Agreed that it'll take a while for the system to reach the critical mass, it
is, nonetheless, a system that will work very well after it reaches the
tipping point.

~~~
anigbrowl
Alternatively, users will notice sooner or later that Vine is less about
trusted reviews than _'Actual customer testimonials!!1!'_ and ignore or even
avoid such products. Now maybe it's just me and the mass of people are
gullible morons after all, but these kind of initiatives have a poor history
on the internet compared to tabloids and TV.

 _Or so I thought until I discovered the secret to making_ REAL _money - and
now I'm going to share it with_ YOU.

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tezza
The blogger needs more evidence.

.

He should write a script to harvest a subsection of Amazon. Then he should
parse the results and see how closely correlated the Vine-to-Bad-Review there
is.

.

A couple of data points here or there are not very convincing, but if he
sampled say 10,000 products he could say:

* How many have reviews from Vine?

* Of those Vine reviews, what is the distribution of votes?

* Of non Vine reviews, what is the distribution?

~~~
jbischke
I'd love to do this if I was a bit smarter. :)

This is the kind of thing that Amazon could, and should, do. If they become
very transparent with Vine then I think this could be a good success. But at
least to date Vine feels very opaque and that's not a good thing.

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kqr2
At least the Amazon Vine reviews are clearly marked with a _Vine Voice_ badge.

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ideamonk
Didn't the have a problem with Microsoft Vine, the names can confuse people.
There was an interesting case of Mike Rowe Soft, where Mike Rowe had to
surrender the domain for it rhymed with the word Microsoft -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Rowe_(student)> .

I'm not sure if we're gonna see some Amazon Vine Vs Microsoft Vine name
battle...

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mynameishere
I know that amazon is concerned with their bi-modal review distributions (most
people review a product because they love or hate it for specific reasons,
rather than because they are interested in reviewing-as-such). That might be
what amazon is trying to address.

Traditional reviewers always get free stuff.

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mhb
What Joel has to say about reviewers accepting free products for review:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html>

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xtho
It seems to me the solution would be not to rely on Amazon reviews. IMHO
specialized "price watcher" sites with a large enough community do a better
job in this respect.

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eli
Virtually all traditional media reviewers get their gear for free (though all
the good ones send it back or pay for it after the review).

~~~
anigbrowl
When I used to work at PC magazine, (in London, ~1993-4) we never gave
anything back unless it was a prototype or something. Just as well,
considering the pittance we were paid :-)

