Working Outline of the Paper

Outline for: Credibility on the Internet- The war against guerrilla marketing

Thesis- recommendations on the Internet can no longer be trusted at face value. The solution is to find ways to score the reliability of a review using a model similar to the way credit scoring is done, using information gleaned from other parts of the Internet to find information about the poster of the interview to rate how credible a review is.

High Level Outline:

1. What is credibility

2. Where and how to obtain credibility data

3. Some proposed credibility models

4. Some informal (read fixed) test of the proposed credibility models

5. What is needed to improve online credibility

6. (Appendix A) Who/What is the “enemy” of credibility

1. What is credibility

   1. Defining the Output 3 contributing factors to credibility

      1. A review's credibility can be rated in 4 different dimensions

         1. Objectivity-Does the review come from an actual user or does it come from a bot or a guerilla.

         2. Suitability- Is the reviewer qualified to give advice on the product or service he is reviewing.

            1. For example: if the quality of a given company's diamonds is reviewed by someone who doesn't know jewelry ... the review is not credible, even if the reviewer was “objective”

         3. Timeliness- How timely is the information in the review

            1. For example, does the review cover the current version of a piece of software or the last version.

               1. How much does a product change over time

               2. Varies from product category to product category

2. Where and how to obtain credibility data

   1. To catch a marketer (patterns of guerilla marketers)

      1. Social Networks (groups and individuals)

         1. Using opensocial to check social networks

      2. Forums

      1. Groups

         1. Facebook

         2. Yahoo

         3. Google

      2. Amazon

         1. E-Commerce API

      3. Search Engines

         1. google can search for hits by type of content (i.e. given screenname x, find where it appears on: review sites, forums,web pages...) ex...http://www.google.com/#q=%20ivan_rous&hl=en&sa=G&tbo=1&tbs=rvw:1,qdr:w&fp=2kCy_h2xdw8

         2. Links with that specific ID in it (a lot is good...to many is bad)

         3. Text patterns surrounding the link...i.e. are there forum posts with text repeated (2 times isn't bad many many times is)
            
         4.