When Old-School Reporting Meets New Media Advocacy

21-year-old Arlen Parsa may have launched a review revolution.

The college student came across an ad from Belkin, a maker of routers and cables. They were willing to pay 65 cents for product reviews, so long as they were positive, 5-star reviews.

“I practically did a double take. It looked suspicious right from the start,” Parsa tells TechNewsWorld’s Renay San Miguel.

Parsa’s original blog post on the subject January 16 has since been picked up by sites including CNet, Gizmodo, Engadget, and CrunchGear.

And since he broke this story, Parsa has heard from Belkin executives defending the company and from former Belkin employees, one of whom says, “this is only the tip of the iceberg.”

“Maybe I’m naive, but it never occurred to me that somebody would stoop so low as to pay people to fraudulently write positive reviews for their products,” he tells San Miguel. “One of the wonderful things about the Internet is, news can spread really fast, and that’s exactly what it did in this case.”

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