Anyone who has ever sold anything on eBay knows the power of reputation. A good feedback score easily makes the decision between two auctions with similar products, even at a premium. As eCommerce has evolved to include the decision process for physical shopping, the importance of a good online reputation is greater than ever.
While many companies have taken a proactive approach to this phenomenon by improving or maintaining excellent customer service, some have taken a blackhat approach by hiring Online Reputation Management (ORM) firms like Reputation.com which promise to "push down 'false' misleading search results with 'truthful' positive material that you control," (my emphasis added).
The problem with ORM services is that, given the option, many companies will choose to drown real negative reviews in a sea of fake positive reviews, instead of investing in an improved customer experience. And, despite the fact that blackhat approaches go against everything that constitutes effective marketing, it is incredibly seductive to decision makers looking at shrinking budgets and hard to change services.
As a result, many UGC review sites, wikis, and social networks have become overrun with misleadingly slanted reviews that take away from their usefulness to potential customers.
The efficacy of ORM firms, however, will be short lived. Web 2.0 has revived the idea of a universal single sign on (SSO) through Facebook, Google, and to a lesser extent LinkedIn accounts. What is interesting about these SSOs is that all stem from social networks that will allow the social graph to negate the effect of artificial reviews.
Facebook Connect, for example, is mostly currently used to allow commenting on third-party content sites with a user's Facebook account. A sensible extension to modern SSO will be their integration with third party review and eCommerce sites, allowing users to see what their friends, their friends-friends, and their favorite bloggers recommend as a part of the shopping experience.
And, while ORM firms might add to the estimated 250 million fake Facebook accounts, users will still trust their Aunt Sallie's recommended bakery over that "friend" they've never met in real life.