1. JR A's Avatar
    A lot of the reviews say the same exact thing:

    Thank you so much blackberry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and smooth.
    What's up with the weird Google Play reviews?-bbm.jpg

    Is there a preset review option I don't know about?
    redsaph, bekkay and richardat like this.
    10-22-13 03:08 PM
  2. absolut20's Avatar
    Ya that's suspicious!
    10-22-13 03:15 PM
  3. JR A's Avatar
    Ya that's suspicious!
    Yeah.

    There's thousands of other positive reviews that seem unique and genuine, but every other page in the review section is sprinkled with these comments.

    Weird
    10-22-13 03:17 PM
  4. Highcroft's Avatar
    My guess is that one of the fake BBM apps paid a company to post a lot of positive reviews to help make their app seem more credible but when Google took theirs down, the fake reviews company accidentally posted it on the official one.
    10-22-13 03:24 PM
  5. apodkos's Avatar
    Probably blackberry fans, and people just copy/pasting other reviews
    tatail and richardat like this.
    10-22-13 03:27 PM
  6. sk3pt1c's Avatar
    Ahhhh! So BlackBerry has taken pointers from EA and hired gangs of Chinese spammers to big up their product. If you have no idea what I'm talking about read up on the launch of the new SimCity a few months back and the utter failure that it was and EAs use of Chinese spammers to play down server issues and promote the product on various forums and social networking sites.
    10-22-13 03:44 PM
  7. JR A's Avatar
    Ahhhh! So BlackBerry has taken pointers from EA and hired gangs of Chinese spammers to big up their product. If you have no idea what I'm talking about read up on the launch of the new SimCity a few months back and the utter failure that it was and EAs use of Chinese spammers to play down server issues and promote the product on various forums and social networking sites.
    I knew SimCity had HUGE server issues, which resulted in EA giving away free games.

    Didn't hear anything about spammers; was this confirmed?
    10-22-13 03:47 PM
  8. sk3pt1c's Avatar
    10-22-13 04:00 PM
  9. kbz1960's Avatar
    That's what it translates everything to lol.
    10-22-13 04:01 PM
  10. Houshinto's Avatar
    Ahhhh! So BlackBerry has taken pointers from EA and hired gangs of Chinese spammers to big up their product. If you have no idea what I'm talking about read up on the launch of the new SimCity a few months back and the utter failure that it was and EAs use of Chinese spammers to play down server issues and promote the product on various forums and social networking sites.
    IF that is the case how would they be any different from any other company in the market? Padding reviews, spamming fake comments. Seems like the norm. But thankfully they're pretty easy to spot and filter out.

    I don't like it, but I suppose that's the "game".
    10-22-13 04:19 PM
  11. Tre Lawrence's Avatar
    Maybe zBBRY had S4BB leave a review on Google Play for every app they have in BBW
    redsaph, Etios, richardat and 5 others like this.
    10-22-13 04:30 PM
  12. Tre Lawrence's Avatar
    OP, can't wrap my head around how that is happening. Interesting find. Maybe a glitch?
    10-22-13 04:33 PM
  13. Spades1234's Avatar
    All the negatives seem to be related to the long wait times to get to use it.




    ?10
    10-22-13 04:46 PM
  14. pantlesspenguin's Avatar
    All the negatives seem to be related to the long wait times to get to use it.




    ?10
    This thread isn't about that.
    Terser Nori likes this.
    10-22-13 04:49 PM
  15. bobshine's Avatar
    The weirder thing is that some of those identical reviews had only a couple of stars

    Posted via CB10
    10-22-13 04:49 PM
  16. Berry_Pink's Avatar
    i noticed that too, seemed a little wooden and oddly worded for a review from a random android user, i just assumed it was either crackberry users, bb fans or fake reviews designed to make the app sound really good
    10-22-13 04:56 PM
  17. sk3pt1c's Avatar
    On the contrary, most companies do not need to hire people to lie on their behalf. They welcome constructive criticism and use feedback to better their product.

    Others just release rubbish, know it's rubbish, expect a backlash, and use a standing army of rent-a-reviewers to bury the sea of bad press.

    In every other respect we'd call it a con.
    10-22-13 04:56 PM
  18. k8bushlover's Avatar
    I noticed this earlier today in another thread (BBM 1star reviews - BlackBerry Forums at CrackBerry.com) where it was initially pointed out that many of the 1-star reviews were similarly suspiciously worded the same--presumably negative reviews, worded differently from this batch.
    10-22-13 05:03 PM
  19. Hilman76's Avatar
    Is Someone Stuffing BBM's Ratings On The Play Store? App Accumulates Nearly 65k 5-Stars In 24 Hours
    Posted by Ryan Whitwam

    The BBM app might have made a real impact if it had arrived a few years ago, but it's not very impressive in today's Android ecosystem. However, the app is currently sitting at a very respectable 4.2 stars in Google Play. Good for BlackBerry, right? Well, maybe not. Starting on the first page there is a strange pattern of mostly 5-star reviews with identical or very similar wording. Something is fishy.

    Going through the first few pages of reviews I came across 15-20 entries that I feel are improbably close to each other. They all read something like this:
    Thank you so much blackberry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and smooth.
    They all have the same mix of elements and broken syntax, but that's probably not the extent of the spam reviews. There are also others that use similar elements, referring to the app as smooth or user friendly while thanking BlackBerry. Some AP commenters also noticed the obvious fakes. Not all the positive reviews are fake, but they're at least very suspicious in this context (I'm only highlighting the ones that are clearly the same). We could just be seeing users who were paid to leave reviews and didn't change the suggested text, and other who decided to tweak it a bit.

    It's clear the BBM reviews are tainted, but it's impossible to know how pervasive the problem is. Only reviews that include text show up as individual entries in Google Play, so there could be (and probably are) a lot more phony reviews pumping up the overall rating than what we're seeing. Furthermore, when you look at the reviews that contain none of these suspicious elements, they're pretty negative.

    Almost all the users posting these reviews are from India or Indonesia, which could mean someone in BlackBerry's foreign offices got a little over-excited and fired up a Mechanical Turk (or similar tool) campaign to get more positive reviews. I'm not saying I absolutely know it to be a BlackBerry covert op, but who else gains from a successful launch of BBM? It is also worth noting you have to install the app to leave a review, so at least some of those 10 million downloads were paid for. This is a serious violation of the Play Store terms, and this is BlackBerry we're talking about – not some fly-by-night, single-man developer. What a mess.
    Is Someone Stuffing BBM's Ratings On The Play Store? App Accumulates Nearly 65k 5-Stars In 24 Hours


    Reading through the reviews, its pretty obvious that something isn't right, look at a newer app like Vine, it was downloaded 10-50 million times, has 70,000 reviews (only 27,000 5 star) and has been around since September 19th.

    Pretty bush league it BB is paying people to do this.
    Etios, redsaph, richardat and 2 others like this.
    10-22-13 05:11 PM
  20. look_alive's Avatar
    This is very common on the Play store. These are purchased reviews and downloads.

    BlackBerry or someone with a vested interest has purchased reviews and downloads by the thousands from sites like peopleperhour(dot)com.

    Astroturfing at its finest!
    10-22-13 05:13 PM
  21. k8bushlover's Avatar
    My guess is that one of the fake BBM apps paid a company to post a lot of positive reviews to help make their app seem more credible but when Google took theirs down, the fake reviews company accidentally posted it on the official one.
    I suspect this is the most likely answer after all. Did you see the number of fake BBMs a month ago?
    10-22-13 05:17 PM
  22. look_alive's Avatar
    I suspect this is the most likely answer after all. Did you see the number of fake BBMs a month ago?
    Y'all are working hard to spin that! I would say it's likely that BBRY did it themselves. I mean, we know they touted their high number of BB10 apps, yet conveniently left out that over 40% of them were from ONE DEVELOPER!
    Terser Nori, Berry_Pink and Etios like this.
    10-22-13 05:21 PM
  23. Hilman76's Avatar
    ^^ Do you honestly believe that??
    10-22-13 05:21 PM
  24. Poirots Progeny's Avatar
    I don't know what the conspiracy angle would be - however, some of those reviews just copy each other... fake? perhaps. Odd. Definitely.

    Posted via CB10 on my BlackBerry Q10
    10-22-13 05:30 PM
  25. sk3pt1c's Avatar
    ^^ Do you honestly believe that??
    Cynicism vs naivety. I'd stick with cynicism personally.
    10-22-13 05:33 PM
40 12

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