annotated+bibliography


 * CCT356**

Article Title: Amazon fake reviews get more subversive? Article Source: <[]> Author(s): David Gianatasio Reviewed by: (Cathy) Kwok Yin Chan
 * Annotated Biography #1**

Abstract:

The growth in the market for online purchases continues to increase, ranging from textbooks to clothes. As purchases are highly influenced by word of mouth, online user reviews have the biggest influence on consumer electronics purchases. However, little did we know that sometimes, these reviews can be false. In this article, photographer David Friedman, claimed on his blog that companies are subtly manipulating amazon.com product reviews to get consumers to buy their product. Many companies have been caught by Amazon, which range from reviewers that work for the company to reviewers that are hired to write fake reviews. Friedman analyzed that today’s trends seem to be that rather than placing easily recognized fake review directly for the product, businesses places these manipulated reviews on related products. As stated by Gianatasio, Friedman used the example of Onkyo speaker mounts reviews. He described many of the reviews were more directed towards selling Onkyo speakers. Despite of how great they were, it was just the mentioning of the name that was important. The article questions the legitimacy and effectiveness of online product reviews. I definitely agree with Gianatasio that these subtle placements are an incredibly effective way to market its brand. User reviews play such a large role in terms of getting consumers to purchasing products online. However, as a regular online consumer, it is fairly difficult to distinguish whether reviews are real of fake until you actually try out the product. Wouldn’t that mean that this method of marketing is successful in achieving what the purpose of these reviews want us to?

Tags: Amazon.com, reviews, online purchasing, e-commerce

Article Title: DuckDuckGo’s searches are the anti-Google Article Source: <[]> Article Author(s): Rebecca Cullers Reviewed by: (Cathy) Kwok Yin Chan
 * Annotated Biography #2**

In this blog, it talks about Google’s search engine competitor DuckDuckGo, who recently bought a billboard in L.A. In the ad, it says “Google tracks you. We don’t.” The article mentions that Gabriel Weinberg, the founder, coder and sole employee of DuckDuckGo, stated that Google sends along your search query to the sites you visit. What DuckDuckGo tries to point is that they won’t, as if the searches you type are personal information. Here, Cullen argues that the marketers at DuckDuckGo are overestimating how much search engine users care about their personal lives, that they are going too specific of what people actually care about. As a frequent search engine user, I found Google’s tracking quite beneficial because it gives you what you’re looking for as well as possible ads you might be interested in. In other cases, website owners may want to know what keywords to buy in order to get the right type of consumers viewing your site, as well as getting rid of unwanted viewers. Despite of this, numbers have shown that after a month of purchasing the billboard, the search engine queries managed to boost up by 5 million.

Tags: DuckDuckGo, Google, search engine, privacy