Way back in November 11, I wrote a post about some ReviewMe Teething Problems. In the article, I talked about some issues facing ReviewMe’s ranking system and the way it allows blogs into the network. One of the more serious issues was the ability to claim someone else’s blog as your own.
It looks as if I can submit any other blogs and claim ownership over them as well. ReviewMe has no system for confirming blog ownership at this time.
Now, some people may not see this is a big problem. After all, who would claim a blog that is not their? And the fact that ReviewMe collects money only after a review is complete means a person who claims a blog they don’t own will never make anything since the review would never get posted. However, this is the Internet and on the Net, the best and worst case scenario always seems to unfold. In this case, the worst unfolded.
It seems somebody thought it would be to cool to submit Lifehacker and BoingBoing to the list of ReviewMe publishers. Lifehacker and BoingBoing are what I call FBB (F**ken Big Blog) and would easily command the maximum $500 ReviewMe price.
If you’re an internet marketer and see that you can get a review on Lifehacker for only $500, wouldn’t you jump at the chance? Well, that’s what Laplink Software did. Then they sent an email to Lifehacker with information on where to download the test software, reviewer’s guide, etc. Lifehacker’s response was basically, “WTF?”
You can read how all this unfolded at Lifehacker’s sister site The Consumerist. This was BoingBoing’s response after they found out they were listed as a ReviewMe publisher.
You can imagine when two FBBs start calling you ripoff artists, you’re going into damage control mode. And that is exactly what Patrick Gavin of ReviewMe did. This is the IM chat clearing up the mess.
My take on all this? ReviewMe should have read my post back in November 11. 😈