A recent BBC piece talks about how companies sponsor paid comments online. This is, according to BBC, damaging the ‘Trust’ on the internet. Was there ever trust on the internet? I barely trust what people tell me in real life.

Using comments for online marketing is however interesting. People seem to trust ‘unbiased’ opinions more than they do ads. Currently you could pay very little to get a lot of positive reviews for your product or service. Freelance writers from India and China flock websites like craigslist, linkedin, fiverr, freelancer.org and many others.

It is currently possible to tell apart some comments from sponsored efforts, however companies are becoming more sophisticated with their online marketing techniques, occupying  bad reviews sites as well as good. Indeed, with some industries customers are interested about the bad characteristics of the product along with the good, pushing companies into mitigating these attributes in favor of their own agendas.