BBM is a shocking cross-platform success. Many wrote the app off as launching several years too late to really be a player in the global messaging market, and the app’s very rocky start certainly didn’t do it any favors. BBM shot to No. 1 on Apple’s top free apps chart in the U.S. and then quickly conquered the world. It still sits in the No. 2 spot after nearly a week of availability, which is indeed pretty stunning for a messaging app, or any app for that matter. It has also amassed more than 5 million downloads on the Android platform and was Google Play’s No. 21 free app with a combined rating of four stars at the time of this writing. But about those stars…
Shortly after BBM for Android was re-re-released, bloggers noticed that something fishy was going on. The ratings for the new app appeared to be peppered with 5-star reviews and tons of comments that were obviously fake. Painfully, ridiculously, hilariously, obviously fake.
A screenshot from The Next Web:
Many jumped to the conclusion that BlackBerry was behind the ratings hijinks but in a statement given to TNW, BlackBerry flat-out denied any involvement and said it does not condone the tomfoolery.
“We have been made aware of a number of potentially fake reviews of BBM for Android on Google Play, with ratings anywhere from one to five stars,” a BlackBerry spokesperson told the blog. “We have no knowledge of how these reviews were created or populated. We do not approve of or condone such activities. There are also many genuinely great and useful reviews from our new BBM users on Google Play. We would like to encourage our fans and users to continue to provide true assessments of the BBM experience through the proper channels.”
