Beat 'em up -- astroturfing or fanaticism with Lumia 900 reviews

Posted by Night on May 7, 2012 10:07 am 18

When's the last time you guys looked at the Amazon reviews for the Lumia 900? I've noticed something pretty interesting, that is pretty rare for Amazon reviews: All bad reviews are jumped on and given mean-spirited comments by some people trolling the Amazon forums. (A tactic that seems suspiciously like astroturfing.)

Some back of the envelope numbers:

1-star reviews: 6 reviews total. 51 of 1283 people found the reviews helpful. (3.9%.) Average: 16.5 comments per review.

2-star reviews: 7 reviews total. 49 of 1077 people found the reviews helpful. (4.6%.) Average: 12.3 comments per review.

3-star reviews: 5 reviews total. 49 of 208 people found the reviews helpful. (24%.) Average: 8.2 comments per review.

Not one single review ((0%) went without a single comment.

To compare this with the Droid Razr MAXX 4G (currently Amazon's top ranked Cell Phone With Service):

1-star reviews: 4 reviews total. 24 of 89 people found the reviews helpful. (27%.) Average: 7.8 comments per review.

2-star reviews: 3 reviews total. 8 of 28 people found the reviews helpful. (29%.) Average: 2 comments per review.

3-star reviews: 6 reviews total. 41 of 105 people found the reviews helpful.(39%.) Average: 2.3 comments per review.

Five of these reviews (39%) went without a single comment.

Rough analysis:

While it could be safe to say that people are simply more passionate about the Lumia 900 over competing phones, I would venture that in comparison with another phone, there are too many reviews with comments, and too many "downvoted reviews" (ranked as unhelpful) for me to draw the conclusion that this is the case; I mean, how many people will continually return to an Amazon reviews page to comment on every negative review? To me, this looks like astroturfing.

Anyways. I saw this and thought... "this is rather odd," which always warrants a forum post.