I just contacted Belkin to confirm but this doesn’t look good. A site called The Daily Background found evidence that Belkin Bizdev guy, Michael Bayard, is paying folks 65 cents to write good things about Belkin routers. Why? I’m not sure. I sure didn’t mind Belkin routers in the first place and 65 cents isn’t a lot of money for a paragraph. Maybe a flat buck or a USB hub instead? Is false praise really that cheap?
Here is one of the requests on the Mechanical Turk:
Positive review writing.
* Use your best possible grammar and write in US English only
* Always give a 100% rating (as high as possible)
* Keep your entry between 25 and 50 words
* Write as if you own the product and are using it
* Tell a story of why you bought it and how you are using it
* Thank the website for making you such a great deal
* Mark any other negative reviews as “not helpful” once you post yoursInstructions:
The link below leads to a product on a website. Read-through the product’s features and write a positive review for it using the guidelines above to the best of your ability. I have also provided the part number for this product and you can click on the links below to see it on several alternative websites. In order to post some reviews you will need to create an account on the site. You can use your own email address or open a new free webmail account (gmail, yahoo…) and use it to post with.
I sure hope this is just a lower level junior guy getting a little excited and not a wholesale, nefarious plan for online shilling.
I’m positive this isn’t the first time this has happened but this is the first time I’ve seen it so egregiously advertised. Here is Bayard on LinkedIn:
Nice find, I hope no one gets in trouble for this and everyone learns their lesson. All the best in 2009.
Let quality sell itself.
John
You’re a bully.
Whilst I don’t agree with a company paying people to write positive reviews, there was absolutely no reason to post this person’s LinkedIn photos and details.
TechCrunch has 1m readers and you probably just caused this poor guy to lose his job and reputation. That’s called being a bully.
Mike
This guy probably has now a case to take TechCrunch to court. I suggest you correct the post and remove his photo. There’s no added value to TC readers by watching his LinkedIn profile. What’s next? Showing his Facebook one?
Greets
TCCritic
TCCritic,
I disagree, unless you’re questioning the accuracy of John’s information, all of which is published in The Daily Background. It sounds like John reasonably concluded that the evidence held up.
The behavior itself may seem like a minor offense, but it’s this kind of behavior that undermines the trust that is essential to the value of the web.
John’s post is hardly bullying. This is investigative journalism in the service of the public good. I’m sure it’s also good for ratings (this post made Techmeme), but that’s because people legitimately care.
I feel for the Belkin guy if he loses his job and reputation because of exercising poor judgment. It’s a tough way to learn a lesson. But life isn’t always fair. Most petty criminals avoid detection, but those that are caught usually face disproportionate punishment. It’s how society deters such behavior.
Daniel,
Perhaps I wasn’t clear in my previous post. I don’t think there’s a problem in the post itself – it’s interesting and relevant. I agree with you that it is investigative, etc.
My problem is with John posting a screenshot of an up-till-now-anonymous person’s LinkedIn profile. It’s uncalled for. What’s the point in putting his photo and LinkedIn profile for all to see? That’s what I call bullying. Not the post itself but rather the inclusion of the photo.
The right to investigate doesn’t mean the right to humuliate someone unnecessarily. Even in 50 years someone will google this guy’s name and read this post. That’s uncalled for.
By the way, just to clarify: I don’t know this guy… I just don’t like it when people are bullied.
I had the same reaction:
Great to do the reporting (assuming it is accurate, and that this isn’t some bizarre case of a competitor or enemy spoofing the guy).
BUT – publishing a screen shot of the guy’s LinkedIn profile is sensationalized journalism. To me, bringing it down to this level smacks of bullying, and it isn’t necessary for the news report. It takes what would have potentially been a great report, and makes it like ValleyWag crap.
Bullying like this makes me want to get my tech news elsewhere, and I’d like to see TC reconsider it’s approach when it comes to sensationalized reporting like this.
Yes, you get a short term burst of interest. But you also lose respect from regular readers like me.
“This is investigative journalism in the service of the public good.”
Er, it’s an investigation, sure. And to be clear, it was TDB who investigated, not TC.
I concede that the credit for the investigative journalism goes to TDB–which also was the first to post the screen shot of the LinkedIn profile. So, perhaps the worst accusation you could make is that John’s post was just a me-too of the TDB post, and that he threwi a punch at a guy while a bully (TDB) has him pinned.
But I still don’t agree that this is bullying. When you post your profile on LinkedIn, you benefit from being in the public eye. But that also means you pay the cost of not being able to hide. You can’t have it both ways. I’m a blogger–I know that “publishing” derived from the same root as “public”.
I agree with TCcritic. By putting his photo into this post, the consequence can be severe to the poor guy. Perhaps, it is better to leave at the company level, rather than the individual level.
—————————–
http://www.Phokki.com – Turn photo into graphic art
I disagree. I love Belkin products and I’m sure this is one bad apple spoiling the batch. If this is his idea of marketing, hopefully he’ll learn something on the job or in his next position. When Belkin gets back to me I’ll post their response as well.
JB
“next position” ???
surely the next company has the internet. I doubt he will have an easy time finding that “next position” in this economic climate once the prospective employer google’s his name.
TC should at least cover the cost of the guy’s court costs to handle his name change.
…But will you post the profile picture of the Belkin rep who sends you the email?
And it’s all about whether he’s now considered a public figure. If so, we can do just about anything we want to his image.
This guy couldn’t take TC to court. There is no slander involved. This guy published something in the public domain (his job post, his LinkedIn profile, etc) and it got reposted. Nothing against the law about that. And they didn’t cause this guy to lose his job or reputation — if he does, then he caused that by engaging in activities which could make him lose his job and reputation. If he never engaged in these activities then no reason for him to ever be outted. It would be slander if he never engaged in these activities and this story was published with knowingly false information.
It is a cheap way to advertise his product. Anyone that is swayed by testimonials writen by strangers will probably buy his product.
Most people that buy routers would be more interested in specifications and cost. If they are reading testimonials, they shouldn’t be buying this sort of product.
90% of the population has no clue what specs matter on a router. Even the word router is something most people don’t really understand. Would you mom know what a router is?
Star ratings and testimonials are huge. If something has 2 stars…you are not going to buy it. amazon should simply remove all reviews for those products and ban them for 6 months. It degrades consumer trust.
Hmm .. so according to you, if two products have the same specs, and one is cheaper than the other, you buy the cheaper item? Do specs cover build quality, reliability, quality of internal components, ease of use, … (shall I go on?) .. ?
Wait a minute! So you’re saying that even if they have need for a product, people shouldn’t be buying it if they don’t understand it?!
The auto industry would be even more non existent than it is now if that were the case, not to mention electricity, telephones etc etc etc.
If you know nothing about a product you either rely on professional reviewers or people who have the product. That seems perfectly reasonable to me!
obviously belkin routers suck otherwise they wouldnt need to pay for positive reviews.
i certainly returned my overpriced garbage belkin router when it didnt work as advertised.
I love Belkin routers… I have a few G+ routers and just got a new N1 Vision….
However, I am really facing problems lately…
here’s MY question: could someone else have posted that offer? i mean, in this day and age of black hat marketing, what’s to stop anyone from posting an ad for another company in the hopes of being found out and publicized?
there’s big money in reputation sabotage.
Good pt. Hope that’s the case, but I’m unconvinced..
check out my article today by clicking my name right here. this post led me to write it. reputation sabotage is the reality we are moving toward.
so it begins.
danielthepoet works for Belkin.
Insider, I do not work for Belkin, nor have I ever been engaged by them or for them.
I believe that Critical Thinking Skills are essential for responsible adults, which means asking questions rather than ignorantly accepting everything at face value.
I think that was a joke…
I believe that a sense of humor is essential for interesting adults, which means having a good chuckle when someone writes something that is funny.
Now I know what brand of routers *not to buy* and *not to recommend others*. Anybody who has faith in its own products would never commit such a marketing fraud.
That’s what I’ve been thinking for years. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had to pay for good reviews because their products are bad and their customer service is worse IMHO. In fact, the first thing you find if you Google my name is my review of a Belkin router and it was not a positive one.
I hope this is not true. I will certainly stop buying ANY Belkin products in the future for their deceptive practices. I will also extremely suspect of reviews on Amazon and Newegg.
Ignore what I just said…. Nobody could ever spoof a posting like that. I don’t know what I am talking about.
;-)
(Real name – TomWoolf)
Sorry Daniel – just trying to prove your point… I’m probably going to geek hell for spoofing your name (deservedly).
LOL. but you proved my point. It’s a lot easier than we think.
Unless we all adopt some sort of OpenID type product that is universally accepted, even when using AdWords and Paypal and every other ecommerce related activity, anyone with the idea and the money can pretend to be anyone else.
These are very common thing now a days. Internet is an open community but companies like Belkin products should follow some kind of ethics to maintain their reputation.
Thanks a lot CrunchGear for this information.
Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m VERY SATISFIED with my BELKIN WIRELESS G ROUTER. I bought it because I needed GREAT WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY in my apartment, and man does it work wonders! My wife can get to recipes online, my little daughter can get to her homework assignments, and late at night, I can get to explicit content with no problems! The speed is INCREDIBLE, and I would never return my Belkin router, EVER!
/sixtyfivecents
You forgot to thank this site for the wonderful deal and mark other comments here as ‘not helpful’ ! :P
Dirty tricks guerilla marketing should not be ruled out, especially as it just hit the top spot on Twitscoop.
Surely nobody would so stupid as to leave such an obvious trail, would they?
lol! Talk about desperate marketing…
http://stuckinframes.blogspot.com
Talk about irony ;-)
Innocent until proven guilty… On the positive side, this is a good reminder that there is a lot of false information on the Web. On Apple’s AppStore, it is so obvious when sellers ask friends and coworkers to write positive reviews, possibly reimbursing them for the cost of the app. Leveraging Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is really a new low.
One conclusion of all this is that there is still a lot of value in journalism and journalistic ethics, and that professional reviews are worth their weight in gold. How can we trust crowd intelligence when it is still so easy to impersonate or be anonymous and lie, and to top it all, in a scalable way.
Very good point Jean. Although, the very fact that its been exposed also provides a counterargument that you can’t really fool the crowd for long.
Ouch..that’s not good at all. Would Belkin admit it if they were doing this? Not likely.
Amazon, and other shopping sites, could stamp this out by promoting reviews that come from people who actually bought the product (through their website). We should know which reviews come from someone who definitely has it, and someone who might not. It would make reviews more valuable.
Boycott israeli web 2.0 apps:
Jajah
Aniboom
Metacafe
Speedbit
Foxytunes
MySupermarket
Zlango
MyHeritage
WeFi
eSnips
PicApp
Give it a rest. At least they spend their time and money producing high-quality innovative products unlike the other side that creates…ummm…bombs? rockets?
And FYI you might as well just stop using the Internet in general because Israelis have had a hand in creating an abundance of services, what you posted isn’t even a fraction of what they’ve contributed.
You try to produce “high-quality innovative products” under the conditions they’re forced to live in. Boycotting is cruel, but as a response to bombing their children it’s pretty fair I think. These israeli entrepreneurs should blame their governments.
There is no excuse for killing innocent children and people, for both sides.
Maybe if the Palestinians invested their creativity and R&D in Web 2.0 start-ups instead of in building crude missiles and digging tunnels to smuggle explosives, the Middle East would have looked differently.
So much creativity in the Arab world appears to be tunneled to one direction only: hatred.
Muslims are the laziest people on the planet!!! This situation is perfect for them because that got somebody to blame…i live in DENMARK and they are taking 40% of the welfare!!! considering the fact that they are only 5% of Denmark’s population this is for sure a world recored!
Get a fucking job.
wow, with a post like that i’m actually somewhat happy they’re taking your loot
It’s fact that you can see on the government site!
Let me give you ome more:
1. They are also responsible for 65% of the crime!!!
2. Forced marriages – promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a male cousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain of death – are one problem.
3. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/01/heil-hitler-in-denmark-hitler-news-in-germany.html
Wow. That’s pretty low for a company. Very unethical. And just stupid.
So Belkin has crossed our moving line in the sand as to what is acceptable practice in the area of paid reviews. That said, I will continue to try and buy their products for one reason: their excellent support and warranty. When I had a Pre-N wireless router fail after several years, they quickly replaced it with a current model, one that was actually better than the one that died. So I will forgive them this transgression, and continue to consider their products, some of which are pretty good and some of which aren’t.
How nice you like your Belkin product and support. My first router was a Belkin, and they would have had to pay me a lot more than $.65 to write a positive review. It never worked right, and the supposed customer support they contracted out to India was worse than useless. They even told me I was lying about what was happening with the router. But since it was my first router, I didn’t know how it was supposed to be.
They only sell products because newbies don’t know that at that price you don’t get a product that will work for you.
I checked out the Mechanical Turk site once, too. It was stuff like this—trying to pay people $1 an hour to do shady stuff or stuff they were too cheap to hire a real person for an hour’s pay for.
65 cents for a job on Turk is really high. Usually the jobs come out to $3 an hour or something criminally low.
– Henry
65cen?
http://wallpapercars.blogspot.com/
This is sad. People actually rely on reviews because stated specs and real-world performance/behavior are two different things. I hope Belkin recognizes that this is a bad idea and shifts their focus to more fruitful ways to improve sales.
This is the real world computer boy. What do you think Woods, Beckham, et al actually LIKE their products they hawk? Same thing. Everything is on sale and the Internet set the path for stealin stuff.
@Alibaba – wrong forum for that remark.
just plain stupid, unethical, with the end result backfiring on both the instigator and the brand/product. just think of how consumer trust is either eroded or broken as a result of this action.
still i wonder if there is a constructive way to use mechanical turk to generate constructive buzz in an ethical and neutral way, where fellow turks would write reviews, rate, share, bookmark, comment with a certain independence.
i bet this is not the end of it and we shall see more buzz/pr campaigns based off of mechanical turk soon.
The ethical thing to do is to pay for people’s attention, i.e., their time to learn about and try your product. Then they love it or hate it. If you believe in your product, then it makes sense to pay to accelerate the viral marketing by putting it in more people’s hands.
Of course, if a company develops a reputation for only doing repeat business with people who write good reviews, then this approach breaks down. Ideally, the relationship is anonymized. And perhaps the user is tested to show proof of having paid attention.
Mechanical Turk could actually be a great way to implement such a program.
Wow, I used to work with that guy at the Mac Superstore in San Luis Obispo… crazy….
Too funny! Was he an unethical scourge back then or is that recent?
Seemed like a good guy at the time.
There’s a lot more cynicism than healthy outrage here. I guess that’s “where we’re at?”
I sure hope not, because black hat types tend to push *just so far* beyond the edge of what people will accept as plausibly acceptble, and if we widen that, we’re pushing them into unknown realms of shame and debasement.
Which hurts us all.
That is really unethical. I’m wondering how many times I have bought something online based on such reviews.
65 cents???? maybe for $5..
Funny how merchants now care about their reputation all of a sudden. I recently waited for two weeks for my Cowon S9 to arrive. So when I got it I posted a comment on Amazon about very slow delivery. Immediately I got an email from the merchant asking to retract that comment in return for full $6.49 shipping refund. I thought it was fair and took on the offer.
Wow makes me want to not be on linkedin. What if everything about this mess, was started by a competitor? You just flamed that poor guy, I hope he has a fire proof jacket on.
can’t believe senior belkin folks were involved in this decision. No reasonable ceo, cmo, or vp of bus dev would ever sign off on this.
also agree that the guys name should not have been used. What’s the point? insure he loses his job and reputation? Make it impossible to find a new job? Even if it’s true, not sure that’s really the role TC needs (or even wants to?) play.
Well I get $.90 for every comment I leave on TechCrunch and a kicker of $2.00 everytime I say Arrington is a genius.
Yeah, I saw that offer too on Mechanical Turk the other day! I think it was from a guy called “Mike Arrington”. No further investigation needed.
It was a setup. I was framed.
Get over it guys!
This has been going on for over 10 years now on the Internet.
If you didn’t know about it or get riled up about it, you’re living in a dream.
There are no places anymore to get un-biased and untrustworthy reviews.
These paid reviewers are everywhere, esp. in the biggest online stores and community forums.
The best of them have had more than 8+ years to build up their nicks and respectability.
You wouldn’t be able to spot them if your life depended on it.
How do I know?
I was one of them.
The money’s not good anymore though, so I stopped a long time ago already.
Get over it? I think most of us are abundantly aware that stuff like this goes on regularly; however, that doesn’t mean that we should shrug our shoulders and dismiss such unethical business practices with an “everyone else is doing it, too”. If this ends up being a legitimate claim, I hope Belkin’s reputation/brand takes a significant hit. If there are no consequences, what’s to discourage others from taking the same path? At least they could be more subtle…
Grow up man and have a life! Be professional that man is just doing his job well
There are many, many examples of this kind of thing happening on MTurk. This guy is not the exception. More journalists should sign up as workers on MTurk (you can make up your personal info and you don’t actually have to accept any work) and uncover more of the cheating that is going on.
I have to wonder about Belkin, first they insert ad redirects in to their routers. then they drag their feet with driver and firmware fixes and now this. They really don’t know how to do themselves any favours
Could you have scaled those images any worse?
I just replaced them. I think his resizing app was set to nearest neighbor.
Is he using Mechanical Turk to have people write comments criticizing the article?!
Once we get passed the ethical lapse involved in the story, it should be understood as part of a larger story about importance of identity on the web. The Belkin employee’s behavior shows just how important Facebook Connect and other consistent identification platforms will be as the web grows. People will be much less likely to claim these jobs from Mechanical Turk (and they’ll be much less likely to be advertised) if their reviews were linked back to some central and verified identification repository (which Facebook is the closest example of).
http://michaelbroukhim.com/post/71249090/belkin-gets-caught-paying-for-positive-reviews-on
Hello Michael and to the rest of the great writers here at tech crunch…i am a long time reader.
Today we are soft launching The Daily Bail, a bailout news, opinion & analysis site.
In more detail we are a news aggregation source for all stories related in any way to the institutionally dysfunctional, painfully inept and completely counter-productive taxpayer bailout of failed people, ideas, businesses, pensions, municipalities, states and ultimately, we fear, of our federal government.
The site is not complete but is functional and so we have decided to soft launch now given the strong bailout news flow.
For those interested, click the URL next to my name or go to http://www.thedailybail.squarespace.com
In a few days we will lose the ‘.squarespace’ tag.
Thanks again for allowing us to post and I hope tech crunch readers will take the time to check us out.
dailybail
Crunchies nominations were going 2 for $0.10 on Mechanical Turk.
If the company has “trust” or “ethical” as a core value, then the person responsible for this should definitely be sacked.
First for the act, and second for being so stupid as to advertise something like this publicly.
As noted, this sort of behavior should not be tolerated by the market!
TCCritic F-OFF!
If Michael Bayard of BELKIN is truly responsible for this, then this guy needs to be suspended, investigated, and ultimately fired for stupidty
If he is not, then BELKIN needs to shed some light on what is going on with the disorganization of their orginaztion.
KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK TECHCRUNCH, but why for the love of … did this have to happen after my Christmas shopping :-(
I don’t really think this is a reputation attack but since danielthepoet already mentioned this possibility, those interested can find more information in this article:
http://www.net-security.org/article.php?id=1168
If the guy didn’t want to be ‘known’ online then he should not have put his page up on linked in to begin with.
The reputation you create for yourself is the one that you can lose by acting in a shady manner, and soliciting positive reviews for products by people that do not own said products is pretty shady in my book.
Belkin’s management probably would have thought it was a great idea unless they were found out. So now they have to go and deny any involvement.
The really interesting thing here is how many other companies just got the idea and how many were already doing it.
That’s lame and I guess this is not a single incident done by a single individual or company! Who do we trust?
Not only is Mr. Bayard incredibly stupid, unethical, fired and professionally screwed… he’s also cheap. Bummer dude.
This must be a joke or a setup.
I would have given Belkin or Mr. Bayard a day to respond. Belkin is a good and established company who made a great deal of the cable installed in studios. There’s no way their management would be dumb enough to approve of this, or even think they could get away with it.
I am not really suprised to see Belkin use this way to promot their products, I have seen many tasks like this in AMT. The thing is that you look everybody as an independent advertiser provider, then it should be fine for you.
Regular TC Reader,
I’ve already lost respect for TC, since this years Crunchies with an over-whelming number of SilVal companies receiving the award. What? There’s not one other place in the U.S. and only one in Europe that’s doing respectable enough tech work to make your awards list? Seems to me (and probably the rest of the country) that TC is kissing the asses of the Valley companies…why? We deserve an answer…!
So, this incident with Mike’s (I don’t know him either) photo just goes to show that the level of unprofessionalism that exists at TC isn’t just over at the Crunchies…it’s probably rampant.
TC…you’re no longer in my list of feeds. By mistake your article popped up in my aggregator. I clicked it before I read the byline. That’ll probably be how you get me to read your slag in the future.
Who’s with me?
Cool, what an easy way to destroy someone’s reputation. Just do some stupid stuff in his name and make sure it get’s TC’s attention.
How about a response by Mike Bayard!