One of the many hats that I wear as Review Manager at Buzzillions.com is a fedora.  My team makes it our business to detect and sniff at any suspicious reviews that come into our system – and let me tell you, that’s more than a few reviews. Individuals and companies are trying to game the system all the time!

I’ve been kind of quiet on the buzz blog for a while, but I wanted to chime in this week since review sites have been getting so much heat in the news. From the allegations against Yelp, to the Belkin scandal, to the most recent Amazon debacle, the media is looking to find the next shady review site. But they won’t find fodder for their next exposé on buzzillions.com. Not only do we post the good, the bad, and the ugly in our reviews, but we also go to great lengths to ensure that we represent those reviews in a way that is fair and transparent.

One review per-person, per-product

Unlike Yelp which uses an algorithm to suss-out reviews, all of our review quality assurance is done by a team right here in the office. Each day we search for duplicate reviews to take a first pass at the obvious offenders. We then comb through reviews in many different directions looking for unusual reviewer activity. Did we get 50 reviews by the same username in an hour? Did a particular product get 200 1-star reviews in a single day? Unusual behavior like this isn’t a surefire way to spot fraudulent reviews but cases like these raise red flags that prompt us to dive deeper into situation.

The purpose of my detective team is not to stifle user generated content – we certainly don’t want to stop someone writing lots of reviews for products that they own. But we want to uphold the ideal of one review per-person, per-product.

Verified Buyers

Our most powerful tool against review fraud is our Verified Buyer system. Any review that you see on Buzzillions with a Verified Buyer badge was written by someone who has actually bought the product. As a site built on user generated content, it is remarkable that we can take the doubt out of the equation for such a large number of our reviews.  This is also a brilliant way of addressing the issue of the Anonymous Reviewer.  Should people have the right to state their opinions about products and services without having to disclose their identity?  Most reviewers think so. But this is under hot debate from the ones reading reviews to the ones being reviewed: Can you trust an anonymous reviewer? Our Verified Buyer badge grants credibility to our reviews without forcing identity disclosure.

I have to hand it to the big guys like Yelp and Amazon for forging a path through the swamps of user generated content and teaching us how (and how not) to deal with the battles of free speech vs. inflammatory content and anonymity vs. trustworthiness. It’s no easy task.

So in the spirit of Buzzillions, which truly embraces our community of reviewers and all of their opinions (be they funny, edgy, glowing, or coarse), we rely on you, our readers, to help us become a better site. Mark helpful reviews so that the most useful ones stand out from the less constructive ones. And flag any review that appears to be a duplicate so we can whip out our trench coats and magnifying glasses and get on the case.

“Big Taco” Mark and Terra the “Mean Sombrero” are our fearless driving/breaking team. They will be flanked by a crew of Yury the “Big Chill,” Angela “Boogie” Burrito, and a “Very Hungry” Eraj.

The bomber will be flying down the Dolores Street (starting line is at 21^st street and the route goes down along the park). I know this hill well from my morning runs – it’s a three block chore to run up it and I can only imagine what it’ll be like to roll down in a cardboard taco truck. In fact, I ran by early this morning and it was already a scene. I got to chat with a few other teams and check out the course. I’m telling you – this is not to be missed.

Check out the sketches of our craft and read about our team and stay tuned for photos and video of the race!

So, last time, I choose Peet’s coffee because I knew it was a safe bet from my pre-PowerReviews days of shoveling beans for hours on end. But now that we’ve finished off our fresh coffee supply, it’s time to try something new.

One of our partners, Café Britt sent out a promotional email to their customers last week and generated over 300 reviews in just 4 days. While doing some moderation (i.e. personal research), I noticed that they were getting rave reviews across the board. Now we will be the judges.

Currently in the kitchen:  Costa Rica Dark Roast (currently “Top Rated” on Buzzillions.com with a product rating of 4.9 stars and 381 reviews), Costa Rica Decaffeinated (currently “Top Rated” with 4.9 stars and 104 reviews), and Tres Rios Valdivia (was “Top Rated” last week when I placed the order – 4.9 stars and 381 reviews).

This will be a three way experiment:

1. How effective is Buzzillions for a customer taking a risk on a product she has no prior experience buying online?
2. How well is our “Top Rated” system working?
3. Will Café Britt’s blends be delicious enough to overcome the plastic k-cup’s ease?

Now, I know better than to mess with people’s coffee.  No matter how wasteful our Keurig Brewer might be I know that it makes tasty coffee, that it’s time efficient, and that it’s not going anywhere.  No worries, Green Mountain makes an eco-friendly solution – “My-K Cup “ – a reusable filter that fits into the machine the same way that the plastic one does. It makes coffee in exactly the same amount of time*! Plus, since this mesh filter is not bound by the limited k-cup options, we can branch out to fresher coffee: actual coffee beans, locally roasted beans…even locally roasted hipster beans!

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The first “coffee of the week” picks are from Peet’s.  Since I used to be a barrista there, I had a few favorites that we ordered to be our trial run:  Major Dickason’s Blend , Ethiopian Fancy, and Sumatra.

If the ‘green’ option makes a higher quality cup o’ joe, will that benefit outweigh the cost of an additional 2 minutes spent brewing and breaking the habit of using the disposable cups? Stay tuned…

*Disclaimer: yes, admittedly, it does take a few seconds pre-coffee-brewing to fill the filter with grounds and then a minute or so post-coffee-smelling-yummy-in-cup to rinse it out.

The goal: Create an environmentally friendly office environment while retaining all of the sugary funness.

Ten of us (the “Green Team” unless anyone has a less cheesy name?) met last month to share ideas about how to start moving in that direction. It was an incredibly productive conversation that has led to a number of simple yet significant changes in the office already.

1. You’ll notice more plastic bins for snacks and cereal in the kitchen to allow us to order food in bulk whenever possible to reduce extraneous packaging.

2. There is now a recycle bin in the upstairs half of the office to make it just as easy to recycle that soda can as it is to trash it.

3. We can now recycle plastic bags in the kitchen (it’s even a recycled bag itself!)

4. And all that delicious, organic, not-wrapped-in-plastic fruit that we’ve been devouring?

And this is just the beginning! With the green pages on buzzillions.com as our guide for environmentally friendly products, and all the creative ideas bouncing around the office, our carbon footprint better watch out!