Need a book? Try Amazon.com. A cheap television? Walmart.com. Upgrading your computer? Newegg.com. Selling an old antique? Ebay.com. What do all of these sites have in common? A rating system.

With the explosion of online commerce, people have been looking for ways to guarantee a good product without actually seeing it. By far the most common way is through a product, seller, and/or buyer rating system. Online buyers have become accustomed to checking ratings and reviews for products and sellers before purchasing a particular product or using a particular service. Most online buyers will tell you that a poor, or even mediocre, rating alone can make them not even consider a product or service.

The problem is that companies are learning this. Its is no secret that companies have been trying to improve their image by hiring people to make good reviews. However, this reputation engineering may be more prevalent than many think. In fact, it is now estimated that at least 1:10 fans, likes, and reviews for products will be fake by 2014. This manipulation is sometimes refereed to as "marketeering."

This could be a real problem for consumers. Will we find ways of making it hard or impossible to give phony ratings? If so, how would this even be possible? If they cannot be prevented, will we learn how to distinguish real reviews from fake ones? Then there is the fact that some things, like fans or likes, cannot be scrutinized individually in most rating systems and therefore are hard to determine if legitimate. I think this is going to be a major problem in the near future that can only be addressed with creativity.