Barnes and Noble has apparently taken to paying people to write complimentary comments about its products. At least, that’s the only explanation I have for these search results. Let me explain:

While looking at CNET’s review of the Nook Color I noticed a reader’s comment on a comment, in which MrStep accused eco733 of participating in stealth marketing for Barnes and Noble:

The comment does look like a pretty blatant plug for the Nook, so I wanted to check it out. I found over 70 variations of this comment spread over blogs, news sites, tech review sites, and anywhere on the internet where someone talked about the Nook and comments were allowed.

Nice catch, MrStep! Tomj1969 also picked up on the scam when almost the same review appeared on the Apple iPad page on CNET:

Nook Color is better for reading than iPad and better for everything else than Kindle. Nook Color is better for $249. Nook Color screen is supposed to be better (less reflective) for reading than iPad thanks to new LG screen with anti-reflection coating. It allows to watch videos, listen to the music, view Office documents and PDF’s. The Nook Color will not run apps straight out of the Android Market, but that does not mean it cannot run them. In fact, they have done a lot of tests on apps from standard Android smartphones and they pretty much run on Nook Color, which has Android 2.1 under the hood. (The Nook native interface and apps are just standard Android application layers.) Barnes & Noble special Nook SDK runs on top of the standard Android one and gives developers access to exclusive extensions and APIs for the Nook and its interface. So porting Android apps is not difficult. B&N says it is more like optimising them for Nook than porting them. If you prefer e-Ink screen, the original Nook is still available from BN.

What I did was track the badly-written phrase “It allows to watch videos, listen to the music, view Office documents and PDF’s,” because I figure this atypical phrasing would almost certainly only appear in reviews by the same stealth marketer.

I was right. Mehereone has pretty much the same thing to say on venturebeat.com:

The Nook Color will not run apps straight out of the Android Market, but that does not mean it cannot run them. In fact, they have done a lot of tests on apps from standard Android smartphones and they pretty much run on Nook Color, which has Android 2.1 under the hood. (The Nook native interface and apps are just standard Android application layers.) Barnes & Noble special Nook SDK runs on top of the standard Android one and gives developers access to exclusive extensions and APIs for the Nook and its interface. So porting Android apps is not difficult. B&N says it is more like optimising them for Nook than porting them. Nook Color screen is supposed to be better (less reflective) for reading than iPad thanks to new LG screen with anti-reflection coating. It allows to watch videos, listen to the music, view Office documents and PDF’s. If you prefer e-Ink screen, the original Nook is still available from BN.

As you can see, there’s SLIGHT alteration, but by finding that badly-written phrase you can track this reviewer across dozens of review sites. The same thing was posted by “John Doe, New York, NJ” at tech.fortune.cnn.com, on wired.com mehereone appeared again, coolio dropped by crunchgear.com, hereone commented at InformationWeek, and our reviewer appeared anonymously even on Reuters.

All in all, I found more than 70 comments on different sites with the distinctive phrase I searched. Not cool, Barnes and Noble.


Jess Kloss has 8 post(s) on Sneak Adtack