Insiders
Idea that I hate of the day:
Oh, no.
Remember when we outlined how to spot a fake review, and noted that there is a rise of less-than-ethical reviews being placed online because a vendor purchases them? Spotted by Jon Benya, the company above (who shall not be linked to) is the idea that I hate of the day– you log in, see who in your area is offering to buy your review, then go say nice things about them and get paid, yippee! The company seems to operate on the premise that you would have written a review anyway, but we call bull. The ecosystem of reviews is already unpure without paid incentive to sully it even further, plus this completely violates the terms of Yelp and other review sites that do not allow paid reviews.
Tell us in comments– do you think this is legit, or is it an idea that you hate of the day too?
Last month, we featured the Bad Lip Reading videos for Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry as the comedy group takes to their interpretation of bad lip reading of these potential Presidential candidates. We laughed, we cried, we have been chanting “yer ahrm won’t defend yoo” every day around the office (and I mean every day).
Now, Bad Lip Reading has graduated to Mitt Romney and Herman Cain and you see, these two candidates really care about the important things like spider moths, bad breath, and a game of pole position. Our favorite part of Romney’s video is his laugh (we’re already mocking it) and Cain’s video would be incomplete without the “achoo!”
Watch these hilarious videos and tell us in the comments what your favorite lines are!
First up: Romney
Even more hilarious: Cain
Sidenote: we saw this video today and then got to see Herman Cain watch this video live on Fox News. His response was a hearty laugh, and with a wag of his finger, he said, “now THAT is hilarious!”
Real estate media site Zillow.com has posted a Buyer IQ Survey on their site to help buyers “make smarter home buying decisions,” and throughout the quiz, the correct answer is immediately given to explain appraisals, PMI, ownership and more to potential buyers, but most importantly, quiz takers get a score at the end!
Zillow says, “Before you start checking out home prices in your area or shopping mortgage rates, take this quiz to see if you have the basic know-how to navigate the home-buying process” and wishes quiz takers good luck. Average consumers were polled with these same Buyer IQ questions and it was discovered that consumers understand basics but don’t understand other basics, like at what point they actually own a home.
Click here to take the quiz and tell us in comments how well you did. Many of our readers are real estate practitioners, so hopefully we see mostly high scores!
One poll question:
This morning, we spotted a video of an age old web meme that puts custom subtitles over a video of a Hitler movie (with an actor, not the real Hitler). What was different about this video was that it was about RPR and NAR (see the video here). It was labeled as a satirical video, and many found it humorous while others were drastically offended. We asked a simple poll question with the results above which leans towards a negative sentiment.
In short order, we received 70 responses, and at first, most responses were negative, as high as 70% this morning, but it shifted. The one voter who voted “other” said, “Funny but all REALTORS should back RPR.”
Various responses
We received calls to remove the video and Jeff Young, Senior VP of Operations of RPR commented, “business level attacks are part of the game, and we all have thick skins in order to deal with it. However, attacking someone like Dale Ross who’s only role for the last 30 years has been to be a leader and create value for our industry is something different. He is a man of great faith, and to compare him to Adolph Hitler is beyond reproach. Don’t tell me that something like this isn’t personal, because its under the banner of, “satire.” That doesn’t fly. At best it show’s the ignorance of the video’s creator. At worst, it show’s his malice.”
Director of Social Media and Marketing at RPR, Reggie Nicolay tweeted, “our leader, Dale Ross is Jewish and I find this video in extremely bad taste.”
Hitler parody videos in general
VendorAlley.com is one of thousands to create a Hitler parody video- there are 24,700 results on YouTube alone for “Hitler parody,” and it is safe to assume almost all of them are the same concept of subtitles over the same clip, just like the contentious video released today. Although the video creator, Greg Robertson had no comment, it is unlikely that the blogger meant malice, rather attempted a parody, but with only two out of five people considering it to be humorous, it may not have gone over as humorously as it was likely intended.
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Jennifer Windrum
October 13, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Easy peasie answer: Total bullshit. Added to my list of ideas I hate for the day, especially TODAY. I swear nothing is "pure" or genuine these days. Thanks for pointing this out.
Tinu Abayomi-Paul
October 13, 2011 at 12:31 pm
lol. Eventually I will learn brevity from you. 🙂
Allen Mireles
October 13, 2011 at 12:19 pm
I suppose that this is inevitable, given the tendencies of human na†ure to try and game the system, but I really hate to see examples like this. This cheapens the entire online review site concept and makes the company who purchased the reviews look bad too.
I hate to see this kind of thing. This would qualify as an idea that I hate too.
Stephanie
October 13, 2011 at 12:21 pm
The only good I see in this is going on the site to see who in my area is willing to pay for reviews and avoiding them.
Tinu Abayomi-Paul
October 13, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Hate! Have to throw all kinds of shade.
Upfront disclosure by my esteemed colleagues of things they got for the purpose of reviewing, I get. People send them stuff, they Choose to review the things they *actually* love. But in their case, they're also reviewing things that they happened across, that no one sent them. And over time, you build a trust relationship with a blogger, and come to find their opinions to be truthful or full of BS when you try the same products based on a review. There's a level of transparency there.
I know money makes the earth spin, so I'll even buy through their affiliate links. I can dig it. Even the pay per review sites, though they feel icky to me, aren't completely devoid of ethics. They still have to disclose.
But this. This is, regardless of intent, going to create a cottage industry of people who will review things just to make money, whether or not they have experienced the product. Who regulates that? Throws a huge film of filth on what is not a fully transparent process already.
Worst thing to me is that these systems give an incentive to lying, and on favoring going to one place over another based on netting free stuff at the end of the day.
Danny Brown
October 13, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Reminds me of IZEA and all their cruddy sites like PayPerPost. If you like something, you'll write about it; if you don't, you'll write about it. But at least they'll be honest.
As soon as money changes hands, the spike in positive reviews goes up many times, from the simple fact people want to be chosen again by a company when the next, possibly higher-paid, batch of review gigs come around.
Can paid reviews be honest? Yes – but the chances of that happening drop when the encouragement to write something nice for money is there.
Brian Carter
October 13, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Wait, did this idea just come out of a time machine from 2008?
Doug Haslam
October 13, 2011 at 2:08 pm
That the site copy is written as if there is nothing wrong with the very idea of the business is scary. Alas, there are several businesses that will do that– there was one (I won't call it out nor do I remember the name of the company anyway) attached to a monitoring platform that would essentially muster a blog posse to write on your product/service/topic- fake reviews, fake seo fake– everything. I ran away from that demo.