Blackberry BBM App and Suspicious Google Play Ratings 67
sl4shd0rk writes "In what could be an act of desparation of a company in it's death throes, Blackberry has submitted their BBM messaging application to Google Play for download. While this may seem like a logical path for a company on life-support, what wasn't expected is the sheer number of identical 5-star reviews the application has received since being posted. In what appears to be review 'ballot stuffing,' it poses the questions of just how Google is going to handle the subject of manufactured reviews as well as how many other entities have engaged in the same behavior. The same problems have plagued Amazon's review system as well bringing into question the validity of 'crowd based review' and whether it's possible to legitimize this type of system." The linked article points out that the suspicious posts may be the result of ballot stuffing intended to hype one of the unofficial Blackberry apps, rather than RIM's own.
Really (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good point (Score:0)
With 20 million downloads (per tweet from a few hourss ago) in just a few days, I agree. People want the app and the whole ballot box stuffing is unneeded.
Re:Really (Score:0)
It happens with a lot of app and Google seem unwilling to do anything about it. One simple approach to help would be to include a rating only for the latest version on an app. That would force the dev has to go out and pay for more votes, providing a lower return on the unethical practise.
Slashdot: 5 days behind (Score:0, Troll)
Old news for nerds?
Re:Slashdot: 5 days behind (Score:0, Offtopic)
I was waiting this post. Mod parent up 5 stars.
troll summary (Score:0)
Can we just mark the summary as a troll? No mention that there's no evidence Blackberry isn't behind the fake reviews and biased towards bbm being a desperate move.
5 stars! (Score:5, Funny)
(I'll wait patiently for my check now)
Thanks blackberry (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Thanks blackberry (Score:0)
Thank you so much Blackberry team. I was waiting this app. It is really great user friendly and smooth.
Re:Thanks blackberry (Score:0)
1-star: App did not actually warn me about tornado.
Re:Thanks blackberry (Score:0)
Thank you so much Blackberry team. I was waiting this app. It is really great user friendly and smooth.
Thank you so much Blackberry team. I was waiting this app. It is really great user friendly and smooth.
Re:Thanks blackberry (Score:2)
Re:Thanks blackberry (Score:0)
Thank you so much Blackberry team.
I was waiting this app.
It is really great user friendly and smooth.
Re:5 stars! (Score:2)
(I'll wait patiently for my check now)
Cash it quickly when you get it...
or maybe they just made a good app (Score:1, Interesting)
Maybe they just made a good app that people like?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:or maybe they just made a good app (Score:1)
Re:or maybe they just made a good app (Score:1)
I downloaded it. I can't use it - they put a really long waiting list in place in order to try it; which makes these reviews even MORE suspect.
I can tell you that they failed to use Retina assets in 2013. TWENTY THIRTEEN USING LOW RES GRAPHICS.
Re:or maybe they just made a good app (Score:1)
They had SIX-MILLION pre-registered users at the moment of launch (who could activate and use the app immediately after downloading it). In addition to that, they've cleared over 5 million more since then and are working on ANOTHER 5 million. So I'm pretty sure between the 11+ million NEW, ACTIVE users and the 65-million existing Blackberry users, there's plenty enough people already using the app in order to review it...
Also, wtf do you care about "retina assets" on a text-based IM application?! wtf?! is text-kerning your particular kink or something? it's a TEXT-BASED INSTANT-MESSAGING APP, not a freaking game, video or other graphically based application... :s That's the dumbest trolling I've seen in a while....
-AC
Re:or maybe they just made a good app (Score:3)
The waiting list is about 3 days, mine came through this morning. Maybe that's really long to kids these days, but I'm old enough to remember the waiting lists for Google Wave, and Facebook when it first went from invitation only to open to the public.
Re:or maybe they just made a good app (Score:0)
It's the hypno-toad app that makes people right positive reviews with the exact same bad grammar.
Re: or maybe they just made a good app (Score:0)
Oops, *grammer. The badness is mine.
I suspect fanboys. (Score:1)
There are plenty of BlackBerry fanboys around, especially here in Canada. I believe it's far more likely that some idiot script-kiddie fanboys are behind this than actually BlackBerry employees... Or, if it IS BlackBerry employees, it's people acting alone who are afraid for their careers.
They're stupid either way, because of course it just makes BlackBerry look ridiculous (not that they need any more help with that nowadays).
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:I suspect fanboys. (Score:2)
Perhaps this was done to purposely embarrass BB?
No, Blackberry doesn't need any help doing that themselves.
Re:I suspect fanboys. (Score:2)
Re:I suspect fanboys. (Score:0)
Thank you so much for your comment. I was waiting this comment. It is really great user friendly and smooth. ;-)
Re:I suspect fanboys. (Score:0)
Re:I suspect fanboys. (Score:0)
There are plenty of BlackBerry fanboys around, especially here in Canada. I believe it's far more likely that some idiot script-kiddie fanboys are behind this than actually BlackBerry employees... Or, if it IS BlackBerry employees, it's people acting alone who are afraid for their careers.
They're stupid either way, because of course it just makes BlackBerry look ridiculous (not that they need any more help with that nowadays).
One Blackberry Curve is worth 10,000 iPhones any day of the week the BB is far better just the kids and their dicksplat parents have got this fixation with anything iXXXXXX that the donkeys at apple can bodge together .
Re:I suspect fanboys. (Score:0)
One Blackberry Curve is worth 10,000 iPhones any day of the week the BB is far better just the kids and their dicksplat parents have got this fixation with anything iXXXXXX that the donkeys at apple can bodge together .
When the operating system or mobile device I use causes you that much anxiety and angst you should really take a look at who you are and where you are going.
R.I.P (Score:0)
Eventually RIM will come around and accept the fact they have died.
Re:R.I.P (Score:2)
RIM is indeed dead because they don't exist anymore after they changed their name.
Unprecedented (Score:1, Offtopic)
I mean Samsung would never stoop to such levels [androidcentral.com]
Re:Unprecedented (Score:2)
I am shocked! Nothing like this has ever happened on the Internet before.
FTFY.
Re:Unprecedented (Score:0)
When someone uses crackberry as a source, I know not everything is lost (Yes I'm a shameless BlackBerry Fanboy)
Nothing compared to Kik Messenger (Score:1)
Re:Nothing compared to Kik Messenger (Score:1)
Re:Nothing compared to Kik Messenger (Score:0)
Hey, French Connection UK has nothing to do with this.
Re:Nothing compared to Kik Messenger (Score:0)
maybe that's what BlackBerry needs: more BBC?
I think they'd be better off with more BBW, but people say I'm immature. Who doesn't love teddy bears? Not to mention BBW is up 10% today.
Thanks Blackberry (Score:1)
Oh boy! BlackBerry Messenger! (Score:0)
I just downloaded it! I'm in the waiting list, I sure hope I get access before 2009 is over and all of my friends join me in buying not-crap phones!
Got it, like it, wish list... (Score:0)
I have have the app installed on my Note2. I have 2x phones BB9900 and Note2. The app works fine, does what I want it to do.
The only fly in the ointment, is that I can not have the BBM id on my old BB and my Note2 at the same time.
I think that it would be really handy to be able to have a multiple client with the same ID option.
This is something that skype does not do well (does not sync the chats to different devices quickly/at all!)
No check required, but pretty please for the multiple client feature...
Softly now (Score:1)
Reminds me of the negative review wars, too. Antivirus reviews frequently exclaim it installs virus, even of legitimate products.
This on top of normal reviews where people are more likely to go bitch over minor problems than praise -- the one in a thousand guy wins.
Re:Softly now (Score:2)
polarizing reviews (Score:3)
Crowd-sourced reviews suffer from at least the following issues:
- reviews by people who have no business reviewing (Amazon.com)
- reviews only by people who feel strongly about it (Amazon.com, app stores)
- aggregate ratings based on averages, not presented as histograms (amazon.com and app stores have started adding this in the "details", but it's still gameable)
- changes to reviews over time are not obvious
I'd like to share how, despite its many problems, Bricklink does a fairly good job on this particular topic. As a buyer or a seller, you are heavily encouraged (it's part of the workflow) to rate every single transaction. There are no reviews that are not based on experience, and each experience is rated only once. While a total count of reviews is shown, there's no other aggregate value shown that could be misleading -- by the time you see the reviews, they're already broken into a simple histogram (good, bad, neutral) for comparison. They also do a sort of log(t) rating system on the reviews: they're broken up into current-month, current-year, and all previous years combined. So you can tell if things have recently taken a turn for the worse, or someone's tried to fix an image problem by actually improving. History is not lost, but for a potential buyer, recent history is highlighted.
I'd like for reviews (Bricklink, Amazon, etc.) to be broken up into aspects -- the product itself, customer service, shipping, etc. But I recognize that by asking more questions, you raise the barrier to entry, and you'll get less (and much more biased) data. I see far too many 1-star reviews on Amazon not as a result of the product itself, but of the shipping or customer service.
I kind of feel sorry for app developers who embed a "rate my app" feature directly in the app. It feels gimmicky, it feels like they're trolling for 5-star reviews, and yet it kind of makes sense -- try to hit up every user with the question, even if they wouldn't have naturally thought to bother, and do so after they've started using the app, so you get a fairer opinion. But mixed with in-store reviews, and the ugliness of "rate me 5 stars, get bonus stuff for free" offers... ugh.
Re:polarizing reviews (Score:2)
Bricklink does a fairly good job on this particular topic.
what is this, like a lego thing?
Re:polarizing reviews (Score:2)
Yes, it's a site that allows you to buy pieces by the brick/specific minifig/part you're looking for. I was trying to get into the whole Lego Arbitrage thing a few years back and got quite familiar with Bricklink.
http://www.bricklink.com/ [bricklink.com]
Re:polarizing reviews (Score:2)
The fact that it's a peer-to-peer LEGO marketplace didn't seem particularly important to point out, except this:
The product (almost entirely new and used LEGO bricks) is well known to both buyers and sellers, and the reviews are therefore only about the service provided (accuracy of parts, quality of shipping, timeliness, correct representation of the state of the product). There's little risk of someone posting a review about a seller complaining that a given piece is, in a generic sense, good or bad. Keeps the reviews on-topic.
For a system like Amazon, especially with their affiliated sellers, there's more risk of confusing cross-talk between the service & product reviews.
Re:polarizing reviews (Score:2)
We should be careful in building review systems, particularly "find stuff I will like" pages, to:
- give low or zero-review items a chance, until it's fairly certain they are unwanted (wide margin of error, benefit of the doubt)
- give irrelevant items a chance, purposefully breaking the relevant-items algorithm
People may have selected categories they like (or we may have determined them automatically) but as Daniel Tiger says, "you gotta try new foods, they might taste good!". It's far too easy to lock customers into buying more stuff like they've already bought, rather than helping them sample the offerings. A low but significant error-rate in the suggestions could boost overall sales, to everyone's benefit.
Re:polarizing reviews (Score:2)
That would be a better way than the way most stores work now.
I think a lot of apps ask a minority of their users, for example 10%, for ratings. That way most users aren't annoyed by it. You've probably used lots of apps that ask for ratings unbeknownst to you because you weren't one of the 10%. That percentage could then be lowered over time as the rating stabilizes at a high level, so for a mature app it may only be 5% who get asked to rate.
It can be mitigated by simple actions... (Score:2)
Re:It can be mitigated by simple actions... (Score:0)
Amazon should do that too. Almost everything I ever look at has the same small number of "helpful" reviewers posting copy/paste blurb from PR releases as reviews, often the dates of the "reviews" precede that of the product release.
Google has no clue about social spam. (Score:5, Informative)
Back in 2011, I wrote a paper, "Social is bad for search, and search is bad for social" [sitetruth.com] There, I described the social spam ecosystem, from the SEO firms to the phony account generators to the proxy sellers. I named some of the big social spammers.
Most of the same companies are still social spamming. In the paper, I mentioned "Google Plus1 Supply". [googleplus1supply.com] They're still active. They're still selling "+1"s. Their site looks almost exactly the same as in 2011. But their prices have gone down, and their number of fake "+1"s sold has increased from 4 million to 33 million. BuyPlus1Fans.com [slashdot.org] is still up.
Where do they get the accounts? BulkAccounts.com [bulkaccounts.com] is still up, just like they were two years ago. They're an outsourcing firm, using low wage labor to create new accounts. For an automated approach, there's JetBots [jetbots.com], which claims to be able to create 250,000 new accounts per day on a fast connection. They offer "CAPTCHA Bypasser", which runs CAPTCHA's through OCR, and when that doesn't work, ships them to an outsourcing firm for manual recognition. Once the account is established, their "voter bots" add any desired number of stars to reviewed items.
Facebook is no better. BulkLikes.com [bulklikes.com] is still up. In 2011, they charged $260 for 500 Facebook fans. Now, it's only $70 for 1000 fans.
Old-style link spamming was expensive - spammers had to set up content farms, run servers, refresh them with interesting content, and worry about their farm being blacklisted. Social spamming is cheap - Google, Facebook, and Yelp host the spam for free. Yelp tries to push back against social spam; they've sued some spammers. But Google and Facebook don't seem to be trying at all. The fact that the big spammers of two years ago are still big spammers clearly show this.
social scoring (Score:2)
I am the first one to hate social networks for their privacy concerns. But what we actually need is social scoring for app reviews and all. You could build a recommendation based on the friendship relationships. Since I am not going to be friend with "spamer1234", the impact of their score whould be very low. Of course, you need something more than just take the average of your friends. You need something closer to "personalized page rank" or a graph based inference system. But anything in that matter would essentially solve the spamer problems.
Re:social scoring (Score:2)
I'm subjected to a bit of this through that "facebook" thing. Suggested posts based on friends or friends-of-friends liking it? I've yet to see that return relevant stuff. That could be because I have too few friends (!), or because each person only "likes" a small fraction of what they actually find interesting, or because there's so much out there, that there's no reason to expect even two close friends, with similar interests, to both like the item (especially close in time to each other.) For something like Amazon reviews, where the count of possible products is so high, I would expect similar issues.
And besides, just because I'm friends with someone, doesn't mean we have similar tastes. Seems better to do something like Netflix does, essentially pigeon-holing individuals and products, and then grouping them up in the background to offer tailored results. Rather than "your friends like this", it's "people who usually like the same kinds of movies you do, found this one better than average". Implicit rather than explicit relationships between reviewers.
Re:social scoring (Score:1)
Re:social scoring (Score:2)
And besides, just because I'm friends with someone, doesn't mean we have similar tastes.
Pretty much this. I care and would be influenced by what brand one of my friends might go with for a gaming rig power supply... but couldn't care about his selection in cars, or wine, or clothes.
Another friend I might care about his tastes in wine, but would probably slap him upside the head if I even KNEW what hardware he was putting in his PC.
But I don't need (or use) facebook. When I'm buying wine I'll ask the friend I share taste with for a recommendation... that's what being friends in the real world means. You can just do that.
Re:social scoring (Score:2)
I don't think that would work out particularly well, without a lot more granularity than is really feasible. My best friend and I have similar taste in novels, for example, so I'd want to weight his opinion on them pretty highly. On the other hand, I absolutely loathe 99% of his music, and when it comes to tech... he's not exactly a power user (didn't even realize that his STB was network-enabled, much less used the function).
"Social" selling is bad enough with the silly tribe-mindedness that surrounds it now, and while your way might, indeed, solve the spammer problems, I think it would end up with results inferior to just doing away with the entire "review" mechanic altogether.
Samsung did this to (Score:0)
Taking a page out of Samsungs playbook and no one seems to care that Samsung did this with Samsung AND HTC (I believe) products. Ya, but with Blackberry it is some sort of problem?
Troll (Score:0)
In what could only be a deliberate attempt at trolling a company trying to make a comeback....Timothy you blow
Ironic... (Score:0)
...reading an article on /. that on it's face, casually overlooks the obvious trolls and fanbois doing what it is that they ALWAYS do... There's nothing to see here, move along....
NOT surprised, however, to see that this article is the first one this week talking about BBM... 10 million downloads in the first 24 hours, shooting to the top of both Google AND Apple app stores in the first day and staying there... A completely successful, and very widely popular software application hits like a meteor and there's nothing but the sound of crickets on a site supposedly dedicated to tech/nerd news... *shocking*...
-AC
Normal business practice for RIM (Score:0)
This wouldn't be this first time that they've played with ratings [openwhatsapp.org].
Fanboys be hatin'... stop and try the app. (Score:0)
It's unfortunate that the writer's bias towards his alternative mobile platform pervades this news article and further may prevent him from evaluating a worthwhile application that's extremely popular. In the past 24 hours I've received at least 12 BBM PIN's via text and I've seen plenty of people post their new PIN's to Facebook so there's a good possibility it is as popular as the ratings suggest.
Not exclusive to BBM (Score:0)
This happens to every single app in the Google Market.
Poorly chosen title (Score:0)
The issues here is are problems with Google Play -- namely its review system allowing bot-spammed comments and its submission process allowing dozens of fake BBM apps. These issues are, at closest, only peripherally related to the official BBM app, so submitter's reference to it in the post title seems ill-chosen -- perhaps intentionally, for sensationalist reasons.
BBM succeeding = Blackberry Death (Score:0)
If people on Android/iPhone actually use BBM, that will kill Blackberry, because those users will have no reason to buy a Blackberry. Just use the BBM app for Android/iPhone.
More than just suspicious of (Score:1)