A History of Revision

"Hotels, restaurants and online shops that post glowing reviews about themselves under false identities could face criminal prosecution under new rules that come into force next year. From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court." Link

The above article just so happens to coincide with something I've recently been looking at. A long time ago, I wrote this - an article about how it looked as though reps for Zango were placing what were effectively fake puff-piece reviews on websites such as Amazon. Interestingly, the "reviews" in question have now been deleted for some reason, but thanks to the magic of caches, you can see screenshots below:

1) A review of Zango.com on Amazon (which filters through to such sites as Alexa.com and others too, if I'm not mistaken).

In the shot, you can see two reviews of note - one of which comes from someone based in Redmond, Washington. Isn't Zango based in Seattle, Washington? Hmm, that's kind of close. The other review - claiming "this company is on the right track and their David Vs Goliath game is awesome" is by one "Daniel R Todd" - isn't that the guy who runs Zango? Oh well, whatever.

2) Another "review" for Zango - this time, from a guy in Seattle, Washington.

Now, these reviews are on thin ice at best - I totally disagree with this kind of thing and I'm glad someone is finally doing something about it.

However - this is just the recap. The calm before the storm, if you will.

See, I do a lot of digging around on various places. One place in particular - Wikipedia - is a particular favourite of mine. You know what I absolutely hate on Wikipedia? When people use it as an extension of their marketing tools. Here's an example of a spamblog being shunted on there while removing a valid site such as Spywarewarrior at the same time.

Not really cricket, is it? Hell, it's not even Giant Jenga.

At any rate, look what we have on the Zango Wikipedia page. Though "DTodd" has seemingly had enough of putting up reviews on Amazon, he's now reworking various pieces of text that would make anyone who endorses the "neutral point of view" aspect on Wikipedia blow a fuse.

Check out the text that's been altered in the screenshot (click to enlarge).

Any reference to "Adware" becomes "Desktop advertising program", "thus slowing down your computer" becomes "potentially slowing down your computer", "Seekmo infected file" becomes "Seekmo sponsored file" and a few other additions.

I mean, wow.

If this new "DTodd" is just some random guy, then the additions are valid, if a little odd and overly pro-Zango - and the fact he just so happens to have the same name as the guy who co-owns the company is extremely random.

If it's actually THE Zango dude (or someone acting on his his behalf) then I think this page would be useful to read. Especially as the page they created for Bubble Burst (a game that requires you to install Zango stuff) was deleted for "not being notable enough".

Seriously....they've noticed.

I seriously doubt Wikipedia edits would be covered under the new laws coming into force at the end of the year - then again, who knows - but even so, the brave new world of using Wikipedia as an experiment in marketing needs to be killed off quickly. Continue down this path, and it won't be long before it's a big, useless collection of adverts.

What are all those kids copying info for their homework gonna' do then, eh?