Alexandra Jimenez
5/20/2017 0 Comments BLOG 6: Cheating the app storeWhile looking for articles to write about, I came across one about a Public Relations company called Reverb Communications. The firm represents many Apple game developers and publishers. This firm is believed to have huge success among its clients in the App Store, but there is one detail that is crucial to this success. They hire a team of 10 interns to pretend to be real accounts and write 5-star rating on iTunes apps. This is not the first company to use these unethical tactics to gain success and to buy in developers. Reverb Communication claims to have a personal relationship with Apple, while they have been representing App developers like Pangea Software, Harmonix, and many other iPhone App developers.
One of their clients leaked a document from Reverb Communications that the company sends to clients stating how they will gain a following and high ratings on apps. The companies interns are the ones writing reviews and giving 5 star reviews. There is a whole process as to how the “Internal User Reviews” are done. The reviews are prewritten by writers at the company, the reviews are made to be “positive but not over the top, while still endorsing the game as a good product, … within age ranges.” according to the writer. The writer of the article did more research to see if their source was right, and they found that the users that reviewed a game and the user has also reviewed 6 others developers that were clients of Reverb Communications. There was a lot of 5 star reviews on games of clients of the company which only further confirmed what their sources said. I agree one hundred percent that this is an act of fraud. This company is faking reviews to boost sales while lying to users about the apps they are about to buy. The worst part is how openly they are to their clients about how they are not even building real followers, they are gaining them by false advertisement. The company later contacted the writer saying that “they were sure [he] was speaking with one of [their] former employees.” They claimed to not know what “unethical practices” he was speaking about. The fact that companies have to go as low as creating fake reviews just to make money, shows how many issues there are with the tech world. The real issues is after this article being posted, why Apple did not do anything about it? If the marketing company is so close in relation to Apple, why did they not do something in response? Apple needs to keep a closer look into reviews to stop companies from doing this. For a company who’s main purpose are for the benefit on the user, I would have thought that they would be doing something to prevent this sort of situation from repeatedly happening.
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AuthorHello! I'm 19 years old. i'm a 3rd year Communication Design major with an emphasis is visual design and a minor in Business Marketing. Archives
May 2017
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