Although most of the Slide people I've met are religiously fanatical about their products, so maybe they were genuine, but posted with fake names.
btw, you should really check out submissions and comments by raghus here on news.yc - he's really insightful.
Techcrunch in particular is a traditional publicity channel that gets most of its information through heavily biased sources such as press releases, friends, etc. instead of directly from the users. This is why I find it hilarious that techcrunch should be the ones to call them out on producing biased information.
Then again, Arrington has been working to discover sites as a user through hn for example, so he may be doing a small part to correct this wrong.
The only thing that surprises me is that they were putting up fake reviews so late into the game. The benefits weren't that great at that point, and the risks at least mediocre. It just looks like laziness, if anything. Maybe they wanted to artificially stimulate some growth prior to that new funding round and possibly trying to get acquired, and fake reviews are just one of many methods used at once.
Web 2.0 And Why You Shouldn't Fake Reviews http://www.anyarticle.net/Article/Web-2-0-And-Why-You-Should...
2. There are ALWAYS more effective things for you to to do than forging positive customer feedback...
People are EXTREMELY resistant to becoming advertising tools for corporations.
>>>>>It just goes to show that great ideas ARE worth a lot more than great execution!
