Apple has a good thing going with the App Store, the place for iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad applications. Various financial estimates place Apple’s annual profit at more than $ 400 million, and some consider that estimate to be conservative. appear to be enough money for Steve Jobs. He nevertheless refuses to work in the App store making it so things are a bit more honest. There is a lot of Astroturf marketing, meaning application owners give fake reviews to their own products that make the product look great. This makes determining which apps are worth purchasing an undue challenge. The Federal Trade Commission has decided, according to the New York Times, to take a stand.
FTC pressures Reverb Communications to settle Astroturfing case
California marketing business Reverb Communications and key executive Tracie Snitker have agreed to remove all fake app store reviews from iTunes. Reverb faced charges of deceptive advertising as a direct result of the company’s policy of encouraging its employees to write and post good reviews of its clients’ games from November 2008 to May 2009. Reviewers of Astroturf paid for these reviews. Reverb had about 60 clients in game production during that time. These consist of Digital Leisure, Harmonix and MTV Games as part of it. The FTC made it so the business was forbidden from “making comparable endorsements of any product or service without revealing any relevant connections.” This consists of Reverb and even Snitker.
Snitker denies Reverb did anything illegal
Reverb agreed with the FTC, but then Snitker said that Reverb didn’t do anything wrong but just wanted to stop the legal fight and get it over with. The FTC wasn’t yet enforcing the new rules that stated bloggers can’t participate in product endorsement for money, which also applied to the App Store Reviews.
Online advertising can be more truthful following the FTC’s actions, says Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain. “This case sort of shows that what they have in mind is not the individual blogger or Twitterer, but rather a professional endorser. When a client says ‘Where are my good reviews?’ you can say, ‘We can’t do it because it is illegal.’”
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NY Times
nytimes.com/2010/08/27/technology/27ftc.html?_r=5
