The Public Relations Society of America issued a statement in response to reports about shill book reviews posted on Amazon.com. PRSA cautioned against the use of deceptive identities or misleading descriptions.
“PRSA members should not engage in or encourage the practice of misrepresenting organizations and individuals through the use of blogs, viral marketing, social media and/or anonymous Internet posting,” said the statement issued by Thomas E. Eppes.
“As social media expands public channels of communication at the same time public confidence in government, corporations, the news media and other organizations has reached historic lows, trust is becoming an increasingly precious commodity,” Eppes said. “This crisis of trust can be solved only through aggressive education on ethical behavior. If people understand ethically appropriate behavior, and why it’s important, more are likely to adopt it. For others, though, the best cure is the public spotlight, particularly if the behavior doesn’t cross into illegality.”
via “Scamazon” reports result in PR Society of America ethics statement.







eBook publisher hacks Apple sales figures
Interesting nugget from Info Week about an e-book publisher who hacked Apple’s app store to make it appear his titles were bestsellers:
Apple removed a seller from its online applications store after discovering that he gamed the store’s sales ranking system to make it appear as though his e-books accounted for 42 of the site’s top 50 electronics books.
Apple said the hack was carried about by a developer named Thuat Nguyen.
“His apps were removed from the App Store for violating the developer Program License Agreement, including fraudulent purchase patterns,” Apple said in a statement.
via InformationWeek.