Hi,

I recently came upon your post here and I was flattered by its title “ICDSoft Rocks!”
I would like to assure you that your site will not “disappear”, despite the comments you have made.

Regarding your comments for rewarding only positive reviews:
Well, we were unable to find any negative ones out there. Furthermore, if there were negative reviews about our company across the Internet we would not have the extra $2000 at our disposal to give away as rewards :).

In case you had some negative experience with our company, please let us know or post about it here at your blog.

Thank you!
ICDSoft Supervisor

Left by ICDSoft Supervisor on March 24th, 2006

Although I left it unsaid in my original post, the root problem with your paid-review program is lack of transparency. None of the “testimonials” disclaim their financial affiliation with ICDSoft, and folks that read them have no way of knowing that they are paid advertising. Additionally, your announcement of intent to “reward” additional testimonials potentially turns all of your customers into paid, covert market-droids.

This is similar to (although more brazen and dishonest than) referral programs like Dreamhost has been using for some time. They work well until it becomes clear that the flood of positive reviews is being generated by greedy fools caught up in a pyramid scheme rather than genuinely happy customers. The sad truth in this case is that ICDSoft already has many genuinely happy customers offering honest testimonials, but these will become increasingly difficult to ferret out as the paid-review and referral programs become successful. Like Dreamhost, exaggerated reviews will eventually give ICDSoft a reputation as a budget host that promises more than it can deliver.

But referral programs appear to be here to stay. The one thing ICDSoft can do, is to ensure that any such program requires participants to disclose their financial affiliation. This may at least make it possible for independent goodwill to continue to exist alongside your buzz-generating machine.

In spite of disagreeing wholeheartedly with your payment-for-praise program, I applaud you for addressing my comments with a constructive response. It’s far too common to see businesses react to criticism by attempting censorship, and it would have been very easy to take that approach in this case. It shows a lot of faith in your service and business model to openly respond to criticism, and perhaps the market will bear out your faith.

Mike

P.S. In the absence of some sort of internet-wide identity authentication system, you’d make it easier for folks like me accept your status as an authentic ICDSoft rep by posting from an ICDSoft IP, rather than a medicom-bg.net system.

Left by mike on March 24th, 2006

This was a genuine ICDSoft rep, and they subsequently contacted me via e-mail. Read the follow-up post here.

Left by mike on April 6th, 2006