A new advertising campaign allows companies to pay CNET to repost positive reviews on their homepage. Guess who took advantage of that program? You guessed it, Samsung.
CNET accepts cash to repost positive reviews
A new advertising campaign allows companies to pay CNET to repost positive reviews on their homepage. Guess who took advantage of that program? You guessed it, Samsung.
Bold allegations- where did you see that?
uh, click on the headline it links to the story…
Like you didn’t figure out that’s the case. Didn’t trust CNET since 1997. Especially recently, when they offered «reviews», which were just links to buy something. I don’t trust anyone in reviews. Except few known good reviewers for whom review is not main business, not a business at all.
Derp. Lol.
Honestly, don’t see the big deal. They’re not altering the review (whether on not it was biased to begin with is another case). They’re a business at the end of the day and if promoting older content on their home page is a means of making more money then nothing wrong with that.
Bold claim—you got proof of that as well?
The article that is linked in the headline states that the review isn’t altered.
The big deal isn’t the altering of reviews, it’s the ‘rub’ as clearly stated here: Whether or not it is clearly marked, CNET Replay begs the question of
whether the direct monetization of its comprehensive reviews, a field in
which CNET has made a name for itself among tech consumers, will
incentivize the site to publish more positive reviews on behalf of its
more frequent advertisers.
To tech folks or industry watchers, it probably won’t matter much, but to the ordinary netizen who doesn’t pay much attention to the finer details, it could be misleading as “new” review.
The ‘rub’ is indeed something to be concerned about. You’re right where people like you and I would be able to spot it a mile away, but a general user- someone that is CNet’s target maker, might not be able to. Lets hope it doesn’t get to that
Samsung is the perfect buyer for this. They have a bazillion different products all under the same brand. Pretty soon, your average CNET reader is going to pick Samsung by default.
How much would it cost to get the DISH Hopper review and “Best of CES” award re-posted?
I can’t wait until they repost that CES-award-winning Dish Hopper DVR revie… oh.
I wouldn’t bash Samsung for this. They just took the opportunity and used an advetising medium to promote their stuff. Shame is on CNET in this case.
Honestly? It is supposed to be an impartial resource to find out the worth of the item being reviewed, and you don’t see anything wrong with giving a “positive review” because they got paid? If it’s a commercial, I get it. An Ad agency gets payed to sell a product. They can even exaggerate, and often do just that, but I don’t think this is the case here.
It’s almost always interesting to see which flies land on the pile of dog shit first.
The article is NOT stating that CNet is providing a positive review based on advertising revenue. What it is saying is that it is just placing older reviews back on the home page, unaltered.