OT: Saab repair in Boston? ABJ Auto?

[Brett]

> On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 11:50:13AM -0400, Brett wrote:

> Astroturfing?   I can gather from context that it means writing yourself
> good reviews... but wha???


Yep.  Well, actually, I think I might have misused the term a bit.  I used
it in the sense of "pretending to write reviews that don't appear to be
from you."

I saw someone comment on yelp for a sports team they run, giving it 5
stars and writing a glowing review.  It was somewhat obvious, but still
clearly designed to manipulate the ratings system, and Yelp didn't do
anything when it was brought to their attention.

Probably the best example of Astroturfing would be Amazon.  If you look
around, you can find great spoofs on Amazon itself.  People will pick
really mundane products and imitate the typical writing style you see in a
lot of glowing reviews.  The results are pretty amusing.

Brett