BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) excitedly announced on Tuesday that it was getting a great response to the rollout of BBM on iOS and Android. The company reported 10 million downloads of the messaging app in 24 hours and also tons of rave reviews, particularly from Android users. Unfortunately, however, it looks like many of those rave reviews are fake.
BlackBerry plagued by fakes on Android for some time
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was an iPhone news site which spotted the fakes first. BBM was downloaded 5 million times in just the first eight hours after its release. Reports of the potentially fake reviews were posted on Reddit and then spotted by Next iPhone News.
You may remember that as anticipation ahead of BBM’s rollout to Android and iOS heated up, the Google Play store was rife with fake BBM apps. It seems a little strange that this trend would spread to reviews on the real app, however. The only company which might have something to gain from these fake reviews would be BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) itself, although I’m not pointing the finger at them since this seems like a shady thing to which the company wouldn’t stoop.
Which BBM reviews seem fake?
Out of the more than 86,000 reviews received by BBM on Android, almost 70% of them are five-star reviews, while a little over 11% are one-star. What makes them especially interesting is the fact that the language in most of those which might be fake is almost identical even though it comes from different user profiles.
The language on many of the five-star reviews for BBM reads: “Thanks blackberry. Thank you so much blackberry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and…”
Yes, there are many grammatically challenged people in the world, and many people whose first language isn’t English still choose to write a review in English, so the grammar from them may not always be perfect. But it’s unlikely they would all write the same thing.
BlackBerry investigating fake reviews
Michael Babad of The Globe and Mail reports that a spokesperson for BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) told them that they are investigating reports of possibly fake reviews on BBM for Android. Victoria Berry told the paper that they don’t condone such activities. She also said that the fake reviews are unfortunate because many of the reviews for BBM for Android are actually helpful.
