Belkin, a manufacturer of networking and computer products, has had to issue an apology for providing reviews of a product that were paid for by the company. A system offered by Amazon.com called the Mechanical Turk paid individuals $0.65 for each review that they posted.

Like many consumers, I was upset about the fraudulent behaviour of the company, but then I started thinking more about it. When researching products online, many people, including myself, will search the Internet for reviews. By using this Mechanical Turk system, it can skew the reviews by making a defective or substandard product look good. It means that you can't trust reviews out on the Internet, even when there are hundreds saying the same thing.

The next thought I had was about how I could use it to improve business. As any reader of this blog can tell you (if any one even is reading it), I don't use the Mechanical Turk system, and it's clearly reflected in the comments section. And no, I don't need to pay people NOT to read the blog postings.

But I could see some people using it. For example, a company that is promoting a product could pay a small sum to those people who join a Facebook group, add them as a friend on Facebook or MySpace or follow them on Twitter. There would then be a "bandwagon effect", which others may hop onto.

        

 

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