It think "fake buzz" is killing the Internet's credibility. I actually think that spending tons of time tweeting and posting testimonials on sites [rather than working on making better products and services] is exactly what's killing the quality of goods and services in society these days. Fake testimonials are for "As Seen On TV" ads, but for a reliable and trustworthy company that plans on longevity, I think its a 100% bad move. Let the real and unbiased testimonials from people about your business be REAL and UNBIASED if you plan on thriving in the long run of business life.

Think about it this way, if testimonials are rigged, what metrics are companies then using to improve their products? Testimonials influence and taint the opinions of others.

This is the reason why some people have 100,000 followers on Twitter, because they work for an AD agency that creates phony accounts and then adds those users in order to "Fake" the idea that the account is truly popular. This reduces the credibility of your Twitter account and your entire presence on the Internet.

Do you get jealous because a friend or competitor has more "followers" than you? You shouldn't. you should congratulate them instead. You never know how or why they got there, and they may be behind you the next day.

"Faking it until you make" it is not a good way to go. You should generate real metrics, a real reputation, and a solid product or service, thats the only way to sustained and long-term success, and its always been that way.

This is more or less what I did with my site, Scribophile. The site is based on writers critiquing the writing of others, with a point system to make sure everyone gets critiques. When I just started, it was kind of a chicken-and-egg problem: without existing work to critique, nobody could earn points to post their own writing; but without points, nobody could post their own work for critique. And worst of all, without an existing user base, there would be nobody around to critique writing that was posted.

I solved this problem by basically faking it. When the site just started, I let people post writing without spending points. I would then personally critique that writing myself through several fake accounts. These critiques not only made new members feel as if there was already a community in place (thus encouraging them to stay), but they also made sure that people felt as if the site was useful, and made them want to contribute with critiques of their own. I don't write for pleasure, but I posted some works I had written just for the occasion. I didn't care about the critiques they received; the important part was making people think there was a community already there. I also recruited some friends who weren't really writers to participate on the site at the beginning to solidify the illusion of an existing community.

I also had a general "company" user account that I used to interact with everyone on a site-support level. This gave the illusion that there was more than one person behind the scenes. At the time I felt that having a web site that seemed to be run by a proper company instead of a guy in his basement went a long way for credibility. I never gave away the fact that it was just me. I would sign all support requests with "Scribophile Support" instead of "Alex."

As time went on and the site grew, I stopped critiquing by hand, thanked my non-writer friends for helping me and told them they didn't have to participate in the site any more, and eventually stopped using the "company" account in favor of my personal one. Everyone now knows that I'm the owner of the site and the guy behind the scenes. I sign support requests with my name instead of "Support."

I have no doubt that if I hadn't "faked it" in the beginning, the site would never have gotten the traction that it now has. It was essential for getting a community site bootstrapped with a $0 marketing budget and the chicken-and-egg problem that all community sites face.

I disagree with your post. When you represent one thing and do another, it is call lying and it is a slippery slope.

What happens if you prime the pump with using questionable means and it works?

* You now have a lead a growing company. You are the moral compass of the company. Are you the guy to say they should be acting ethically even when it is harder to do so? Do you expect people to believe you? If they don't, do you expect them to respect you? Can you lead without that?

* How much trust can there be between people that know you will shave the edges if there's immediate gain? How long until this behavior results in a bunch of corporate sharks instead of a team working on a goal together?

I lead. I have been right here. CPAPAuction.com isn't a huge business and we need to project activity to grow, but damn it, the metrics are real. I run other businesses that have done better. The people working in those businesses know that those metrics are real too, as are their pay checks and managements communications relating to future prospects.

I've been in plenty of other situations where I could see no white or black to choose from even if I wanted to, only gray. In those dark times, you need people around you who know in their gut that you are moral.

I feel like I get it.

But the thing I get is that you never, ever pull this crap. You never give an inch when you aren't absolutely force fed an impossibly difficult situation. You let your people see you doing the work and what you get back in exchange is the ability to build strong teams, be wealthy and sleep at night.

Buy cheaper desks and put the money into integrity. Then earn it.

PS. If you answer posts/list items/take the action your website exists to facilitate and identify yourself as with the company, I see no moral issue. If you don't identify yourself, I do see that as being dishonest with your user base and by extension, everyone associated with your company.

The article kind of contradicts itself:

Earlier: "Of course, this doesn’t mean put up false testimonials... create fake real-time activity"

Later on advocating: "[REDACTED] takes their real-time user numbers and multiplies them by a randomly generated number. Whereas before, it would say “6 users online,” it would say “68 users online.”

That it is pure lying and it is bad.

"Quora‘s staff started off answering as many questions as they could. This helped create a site that had activity on it, which encouraged other users to participate. Suddenly, they didn’t have to spend hours answering questions themselves."

This reminds me of something one of the speakers (I'm pretty sure it was Quora's founder) said at Startup School - It's OK to do something that doesn't scale if it strengthens your position.

Interesting. To me, the solutions you mention run a gamut of grey-hattedness: I'd call social hacks like the invite-only method perfectly white-hat, while outright inflation of current user numbers seems a bit shady (I'd either just automatically omit the display below a certain threshold or use a wider time range, such as the past 24 hours). Either way, these encourage some useful thought processes.

On WPQuestions.com, we corralled our friends and gave them the money to ask some of the first questions. In fact, of the first 10 questions on the site, I think 6 were from friends of ours. All the same, during the first few hours we were open, we did get one question from a total stranger, and by the end of the day we had revenue of something like $5, which allowed us to joke that we had made more money on our first day than Twitter had made during its first 2 years. And now that we are rolling our software out for others to use, I've been giving the same advice to the people on our waiting list: be ready to line up the first few transactions yourself, because the first few are the toughest. You need to create the momentum yourself. WPQuestions.com has now had 606 paid questions, and we haven't needed to force our friends to post questions since the first week, many months ago. But I think it was essential that we put some friends up to it that first week. Mind you, this wasn't totally faking it, since most of the questions were real questions that our friends were struggling with.

One thing I still do (I did it just this morning in fact) is increase the prize for a customer, when that customer has had a problem with the site, and we pay for the increase out of our own pocket. For instance, just today, I added to the prize for this question: http://www.wpquestions.com/question/show/id/1160 . But I do not regard that as faking it, I simply regard that as good customer support and good customer relations.

Is this fundamentally different from lying to investors and telling them that you have more traction than you do, or even altering your financials? Yes, that would be illegal and telling users you have more users than you do probably isn't, I'm not sure they're that different ethically.

I'm always amused finding new iPhone apps with four 5-star reviews submitted the day the app was released, always sounding like an infomercial. Gotta say I've been tempted to seed some reviews and five stars (especially to try and bury others that are mistaken or just lying) but it's never happened.

I have created a mobile product with hundreds, maybe thousands of happy users. When I finally get to adding the social aspect of it there will be no need for faking it. I'm really anxious to get on to that phase, if anyone wants to help out let me know.

If you are at a restaurant that just opened, you would find that they are extra nice to you. I would expect a startup to do the same, be extra nice to your early customers. I disagree that faking, or lying is the answer.

It seems that most successful "chicken-and-egg" sites, sites that depend on a reasonably-sized userbase before anyone would want to use it, only achieved success through astroturfing (creating fake accounts and pretending like you're someone else).

Personally I find such activity deceptive and immoral, though I don't think it's particularly grievous. Does anyone know how to start a site that depends on a significant userbase without a huge amount of astroturfing? I'd imagine the only way is to either have a lot of really good friends who will help you, pay a bunch of people to use the site until the real userbase gets large enough, or advertise very aggressively so that lots of people are using it right away.

Yelp started by paying users to leave reviews and got a serious backlash for doing this.

The nature of the “items” being displayed/created also plays a major role in this, because unless you own a few dozens cars, starting a classified ads site for cars with only yours, is not going to get you far.

Several dating sites got in troubles for adding fake accounts with attractive pictures to lure people to sign up for their paid service. That is a line you do not want to cross…

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I want to find out whose company name was redacted from the post.

I liken this to when you try to get a group of friends to do anything. For the sake of argument, let's say go to the movies or to a bar. If you have go to friends, you can seed your group there, but what after that? Almost everyone says, "a bunch of people are doing..." and it's kind of a lie because they don't know if people will go, they're saying that so other people will want to go. And this technique works wonders.

I don't have a problem with people applying this technique to their business, pretty much everyone does. The problem is you need to be careful with it because at the end of the day, it's still a lie and you still need to make money.

The best graphic designers listen to the nerds, the sales team, the CEOs, the VPs, and every stake-holder in between. They design a "look" that pleases the CEO, who sells it to the board, who tells the VPs to implement it, who tell the sales team to accept it, who tell the nerds to build it.

The best designers are not prima donnas who force their ideas on the company. They build the design the big guy wants, takes the check, and waits for the VPs to call him back to make changes.

Another option: pre-fill some content with some FB or Twitter content.

Then you have "users".

Whenever a user's "front' page is visited, increase that user's counter, and then display popular users on the main page.

Sure, you don't have true "true active" users, but at least it's users that generate some activity, indirectly.

If some users become popular, chances are they'll want to have a look at your service.

This might be a very bad idea, your call.

And when will you stop taking short cuts? If you do stop, will you find out that your business wasn't truly viable? So will you continue taking the short cut, even then?

Another brilliant post, keep up the good work.

I think many startups fail because they don't fake it until they can make it. (I've been on that end a couple times myself.)

you gotta fake it till you make it, otherwise you are just shooting yourself in the foot.

Being big is validation for most people, they figure if you got big, then you must have something to offer, and at the very least you won't scam them.

This is especially true for communities, since noone wants to be the first one there.

I would say using faking is little harsh. All you are doing is providing seed data.

I would personally caution against the championing, if not the individual embracing of such an idea. This looks like a 'race to the bottom' to me.

Consider what happens in the long run. Sooner or later people will either catch on or get used to a website always having users or content, no matter how new or actually fake it is.

Some or all of these things may happen:

1. Online communications between 'people,' real or fake, becomes devalued. They are already devalued with the flood of people with bad taste. Of course, one can argue that communication is value in itself; the feeling of connecting. In that case I have a great startup idea; one that makes you talk with chat bots but feels like actually conversing. If you use sophisticated enough text generation techniques and market it to stupid/desperate enough people I seriously think this could work to some extent.

2. You will have to work extra, putting in fake content, just to launch a socially-oriented website. Otherwise it will not get off the ground. I await the day until a website has to send me flowers through the mail in order to grab my attention. Perhaps this is a good thing, because there are already more than enough socially-oriented websites.

But what can we do about it now?

One can take the view that this was a great blog post. Not only because it has named startups that use this approach, so the more principled of us have extra data on which kind of people are honest enough to do business with, but people of varying degrees of honesty have come out in the comments section, some virtually boasting of their 'faking it' techniques. We now have more data; you may now do as you wish with it.

Reflect on the business culture and environment that requires this sort of behavior and make a decision; is this the kind of thing I want to associate myself with?