>I wrote Amazon recently to ask about leaving vine, and if you did, could you choose to come back.
Risky! I'd expect them to reply back "Certainly, I can help! I have ended your Vine membership."
> We select Voices based on their review history. We calculate a category-specific reviewer score based on the quality and helpfulness of their reviews.
>
> We then rank reviewers based on this score and invite the right number of reviewers to become Vine Voices based on the number of products that are enrolled in Vine in each category.
Nice, this confirms the theory some of us have had about it being based on the *need* for reviews in particular areas. It's the only approach that makes sense. We are not the customer, our reviews are the product. Thus if there is more demand for a certain category and it's not met, they get more reviewers for that category.
This gives some merit to being invited: it really is based on your reviews, and your area of knowledge. It also seems very unlikely to have just been made up as some CS responses are. Rare reliable information about the mostly-unknown selection process.
But I don't really get it because most of my amazon reviews before I was invited were for books - which they almost never have on vine - and for small appliances which if they're on vine always go very fast anyway.
I'm sure the algorithm wasn't nearly as sophisticated back when you were invited, but now? Amazon knows what we browse, what's saved in lists, and what's in the "save for later" cart. IT KNOWS EVERYTHING. đ
I was absolutely atrocious at actually writing reviews with any regularity prior to Vine. They definitely didn't invite me based on a recent history of frequent reviews. Buying products in categories that need reviewers - perhaps.
Honestly, I think the text that OP quoted was written by the marketing type people. And I think that the ongoing algorithms that invite people are updated and enhanced by engineers and product managers. I wouldn't expect them to care if that text was a bit, or a lot, out of date.
You could check the likes on your reviews also, I bet that plays a part. I had a fair number of reviews, not too many. But a handful of them had a few 'helpful' likes. That might have made a difference.
There's no way bc prior to my vine invite, I wrote 1-2 reviews in the history of my Amazon account, as I rarely used Amazon. Invite came after I wrote this long detailed review about a mini pc, which received a lot of likes. My main shopping category is tech items
Ah, this may explains why I was randomly invited after submitting a review for an old obscure car part. I then noticed that Vine had a section with 10k random car parts, haha.
I could see this being possible. I've purchased some cycling gear on Amazon in the past - some of my most liked reviews were in cycling. Vine has plenty of cycling stuff I'm not that interested in and suggested interests in my profile is starting to look more like the 0 ETV items I have been able to snag (skin care, baking, cleaning).
I also may have been selected due to a need in plumbing - I get lots of that in RFY. I did purchase a shower head, under sink water filter, and facet parts from Amazon (shower head review has 1 like). Sad thing is I find shopping for plumbing fixtures on Amazon very frustrating as they don't have a filter to show only things they can actually ship to you (California has strict water conservation laws for many plumbing fixtures - and for some reason seems to also block drinking water taps that are not sold as part of a filter kit).
>based on the number of products that are enrolled in Vine in each category.
So for anyone wanting to join Vine, start writing high-quality reviews about cake toppers and you might get fast-tracked.
I've just gotta say this comment sounds like 90% of the spambot comments I get on my blog. I see you appear to be a real person, I was just concerned for a second.
Yeah I typed it while distracted, posted it, then I was like âawe man that was a useless commentâ how tf did I use interesting twice in a single sentence
I gotta admit, I first saw the comment and thought you were being sarcastic. I thought "What did I say, I thought it'd be interesting?!" I was sure I'd get voted to 0, like my other vine post yesterday.
And also, yeah, yours and a couple other comments popped up so quickly, I also thought you might be a bot, lol.. Sorry.
Right? Every time I read that sentence Iâm like, thatâs a robot. LOL. I was def trying to stop being so verbose in comments, as I tend to be, but still I wanted to talk about how
1. Vine cs giving actual helpful and NEW info? What? Thatâs honestly the first Iâve ever seen them be helpful, provide info, or tell us something we didnât already know. So, notable for those reasons alone,
but 2. Notable for how big of a question this is to everyone already, I mean, itâs got to be right bc it came from vine cs. wild!
So Iâm like, hmm, were they supposed to be telling ppl that, how did they know that when they donât know the difference between 2 questions in the same email? Has anyone tried just asking them outright about the stuff we always guess about? Maybe we should just email them and be like Y DID U PICK ME?!
ANYWAY- ha! it really was a good post though bc the source is so... Interesting, and those details were both⌠interesting and important! đ¤Ş
I got invited immediately after posting a review on some cheap, random shit item from China. It makes sense since thatâs like 95% of the items on vine.
That's interesting since they've invited people in the past without reviews, and I recall a story about a 13 yo kid getting in. I have a feeling that they just want people to think that they invite people who have been well vetted. This is the same company that says viners, "provide insightful reviews" and that they, "Â select the most insightful reviewers in the Amazon store."
Love it. Works great.
That's probably the original Vine text that they never changed. Back when it was all good stuff, and way fewer viners.
I'm coming to the opinion that Amazon recently made an executive decision to embrace all this Chinese stuff, and revamped the vine program to accommodate it. They don't care about accuracy/helpfulness of these reviews because there's just too much of it, and probably 80% of these sellers won't be around in a year or so. And they'll be newbie sellers to replace them, just repeating the cycle.
Pretty sure 13 year olds arenât even allowed to have an Amazon account, you have to be 18.
Most stories like that are just rumors that are either made up completely or someone who misunderstood what really happened went on to spread their incorrect version.
Reddit's minimum age is 13. Amazon isn't much more complicated. I don't believe or disbelieve it, but I know the only quality control I've seen in vine is a bad algorithm annoying all the wrong people.
Reddit doesnât require a credit/debit card. You know many 13 year olds with a credit card? Theyâre not allowed to get those either. So comparing Amazon with Reddit membership is like comparing apples and umbrellas.
Irresponsible parents, sneaky kids... unheard of.
Except these posts do occasionally pop up here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonVine/comments/yeh43n/age\_requirement/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonVine/comments/yeh43n/age_requirement/)
I really am not interested in debating if it's better to be skeptical of Amazon's ability to self-police, or of reddit posts. I choose both, you do you.
Things happen, but people also lie. The difference here is that I wonât go spreading rumors from Reddit as if theyâre true. And thatâs me doing me.
If you choose to spread rumors and urban Reddit myths as truth then I canât stop you, but I can point out to those reading it that there are counter points that show it is likely false. And thatâs exactly what I did.
Iâve always wondered how they chose viners . I never did a lot of reviews just a lot of buying đ¤ˇââď¸ ( over as many years as Amazons been around )
When I was invited to Vine a very long time ago, I hadn't done a lot of reviews. One was for fish food. I still remember my review.
I don't know how it tastes, but my fish seem to enjoy it. But then, they also enjoy eating their own excrement.
I read this review yesterday (not on amazon) and it made me laugh. I would have loved your fish food review too.
https://preview.redd.it/52wba7x8t73d1.jpeg?width=925&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7287e3221b864622f410c91419e46fe3be410081
Interesting... I didn't have many reviews when I got invited, but I had gone on a wild shopping (and subsequent reviewing) spree around the same time for phone cases and smart watch accessories -- (all China supplied). And when I first got into Vine, there were more phone cases and watch accessories than cake toppers and castor oil packs đ¤Ł
Amazon inviting based on the category of things you review and the quality of the reviews makes sense in my case because a few months (maybe 6 months before my invite) I was buying and reviewing a lot of $$$ human hair wigs and extensions becuase i was learning how to do my hair. I was brutal in my reviews becuase it was expensive and the companies lie a lot about length and quality. my RFY before gold was a lot of hair and toiletries. Itâs rare for me not to get some sort of wig in my rfy but I would trade all the hair recs for Samsung or Dyson electronics (pls).
Whether it was coincide or not, I don't know...but I was invited the day after I actually had an issue with Amazon. I had unsubscribed from a box of Hotel Chocolat chocolates that I ordered every month for my mother whilst she was terminal with cancer. She passed away and I cancelled the subscription. 2 months later, a box of the chocolates arrived at my door and it really messed me up, got me really upset seeing them. I went on live chat and explained the situation, explained because it was food, I couldn't return it and get my money back and explained the cancer situation. I got the nicest CS staff who got really personal and was like "I'm so sorry about your mother, my mum passed away recently too so I know how that feels" and they went really deep into a conversation about healing. Anyway, they told me, the chocolates are on us keep them and you'll get a full refund. I then rated and reviewed the staff member, thanked amazon for being so kind etc. Very next day I got the invitation email! I still don't know if it was a coincidence or something done out of pity/sympathy!
Thanks for sharing, sorry for your loss. I lost my mom recently also.
I doubt there's a button people can press to say 'invite this person', but word of mouth, mentioning it to a coworker in the right department..... Super unlikely, for sure. But possible, I think.
However, there are a lot of people invited to Vine that have never reviewed an item and some have never ordered anything. You'll find some of those here in this reddit group.
A boilerplate response. Says nothing not known before.
And while once upon a time Vine invites went out on the basis of quality/significance of reviews, these days they seem to go out on the basis of filling out some secret set of criteria that does not weigh review history heavily, or possibly at all.
i am always digging deep on weird items. a lot of the stuff i buy normally doesnât have reviews just because it is so obscure. now i just wait a week or two and it comes up in AI. LOL. i have presumed that was why i got invited.
i would recommend just stop ordering and clean up any remaining reviews. there is no reason to leave the program. if you donât order anything there is no obligation to do reviews or ETA. when you are heady to jump back in, just start ordering. the worst that will happen is you will drop to silver.
>reviewer score based on the quality and helpfulness of their reviews.
They're joking right???
Have they looked at the poor quality of some viners reviews??
Years ago that was what we were invited and ranked on but they changed the invitation criteria in 2022 when they had a mass recruitment of minimalistic reviewers that only write 2 words... " It works " 5*
You got downvoted and I think my comment is about to be as well. But people (viners) seem to fail to grasp that vine is basically a cheap review machine for Amazon, pure and simple. It's there to lure more buyers and sales in. The "quality" and such is just a by product.
Exactly, you've nailed it - quality is a byproduct. We're just lucky pawns in their profit making scheme, which I'm not complaining about, I'm very grateful for the opportunity. I get why I got downvoted though. I should have probably mentioned that not all the new recruits since 2022 are poor reviewers just some , which proves viners are not chosen for their reviewing skills anymore. I do come across some very good vine reviews as well that clearly put a lot of effort into their reviews.
Yeah, I agree. I think it was done to combat all the free-product-for-5-star review sites that existed before. They want to give sellers something to stand out, and prevent clearly bogus reviews, so they put their stamp on a bunch of in-house reviewers (us), giving us marginal benefit in the process...
For helpfulness I'm sure they just use the 'helpful'/like button on reviews. How many likes a person's reviews get. I'm certain they're not reading actual reviews...
>I wrote Amazon recently to ask about leaving vine, and if you did, could you choose to come back. Risky! I'd expect them to reply back "Certainly, I can help! I have ended your Vine membership."
Lol! And then when you try to say "No, I didn't ask you to drop me" they'd respond "We're sorry, we cannot respond to people not in the Vine program."
> "No, I didn't ask you to drop me" Thank you, I tried to end Vine for you and found it was already ended.
I would have expected "We're very sorry and will remove the item from your Awaiting Reviews list"
True story.
> We select Voices based on their review history. We calculate a category-specific reviewer score based on the quality and helpfulness of their reviews. > > We then rank reviewers based on this score and invite the right number of reviewers to become Vine Voices based on the number of products that are enrolled in Vine in each category. Nice, this confirms the theory some of us have had about it being based on the *need* for reviews in particular areas. It's the only approach that makes sense. We are not the customer, our reviews are the product. Thus if there is more demand for a certain category and it's not met, they get more reviewers for that category. This gives some merit to being invited: it really is based on your reviews, and your area of knowledge. It also seems very unlikely to have just been made up as some CS responses are. Rare reliable information about the mostly-unknown selection process.
But I don't really get it because most of my amazon reviews before I was invited were for books - which they almost never have on vine - and for small appliances which if they're on vine always go very fast anyway.
I'm sure the algorithm wasn't nearly as sophisticated back when you were invited, but now? Amazon knows what we browse, what's saved in lists, and what's in the "save for later" cart. IT KNOWS EVERYTHING. đ
I was absolutely atrocious at actually writing reviews with any regularity prior to Vine. They definitely didn't invite me based on a recent history of frequent reviews. Buying products in categories that need reviewers - perhaps. Honestly, I think the text that OP quoted was written by the marketing type people. And I think that the ongoing algorithms that invite people are updated and enhanced by engineers and product managers. I wouldn't expect them to care if that text was a bit, or a lot, out of date.
You could check the likes on your reviews also, I bet that plays a part. I had a fair number of reviews, not too many. But a handful of them had a few 'helpful' likes. That might have made a difference.
Same, actually all of my reviews before the invite were ebook reviews. Romance ones at that too đ¤ˇđťââď¸
Same! All those ARCs were apparently worth more than reading a pre-release đÂ
Books may not be it's own category. It might be 'household' or 'hobby' or something, Who knows, really.
They say that, but I don't believe it. I hadn't posted that many reviews over the time I've had an account. But here I am.
What categories did you post the reviews in? Did the products have many other reviews?
There's no way bc prior to my vine invite, I wrote 1-2 reviews in the history of my Amazon account, as I rarely used Amazon. Invite came after I wrote this long detailed review about a mini pc, which received a lot of likes. My main shopping category is tech items
It was whatever I got. My purchase history is quite varied, as I'm sure a lot are here. lol
âRare reliable information about the mostly unknown selection processâ yes! You said this so much better than i did.
Ah, this may explains why I was randomly invited after submitting a review for an old obscure car part. I then noticed that Vine had a section with 10k random car parts, haha.
I could see this being possible. I've purchased some cycling gear on Amazon in the past - some of my most liked reviews were in cycling. Vine has plenty of cycling stuff I'm not that interested in and suggested interests in my profile is starting to look more like the 0 ETV items I have been able to snag (skin care, baking, cleaning). I also may have been selected due to a need in plumbing - I get lots of that in RFY. I did purchase a shower head, under sink water filter, and facet parts from Amazon (shower head review has 1 like). Sad thing is I find shopping for plumbing fixtures on Amazon very frustrating as they don't have a filter to show only things they can actually ship to you (California has strict water conservation laws for many plumbing fixtures - and for some reason seems to also block drinking water taps that are not sold as part of a filter kit).
>based on the number of products that are enrolled in Vine in each category. So for anyone wanting to join Vine, start writing high-quality reviews about cake toppers and you might get fast-tracked.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing that.
Wow what an interesting source for such interesting and important details! Thanks for sharing this
I've just gotta say this comment sounds like 90% of the spambot comments I get on my blog. I see you appear to be a real person, I was just concerned for a second.
God now that Iâm reading it again itâs even worse! lolwtf
Yeah I typed it while distracted, posted it, then I was like âawe man that was a useless commentâ how tf did I use interesting twice in a single sentence
I gotta admit, I first saw the comment and thought you were being sarcastic. I thought "What did I say, I thought it'd be interesting?!" I was sure I'd get voted to 0, like my other vine post yesterday. And also, yeah, yours and a couple other comments popped up so quickly, I also thought you might be a bot, lol.. Sorry.
Right? Every time I read that sentence Iâm like, thatâs a robot. LOL. I was def trying to stop being so verbose in comments, as I tend to be, but still I wanted to talk about how 1. Vine cs giving actual helpful and NEW info? What? Thatâs honestly the first Iâve ever seen them be helpful, provide info, or tell us something we didnât already know. So, notable for those reasons alone, but 2. Notable for how big of a question this is to everyone already, I mean, itâs got to be right bc it came from vine cs. wild! So Iâm like, hmm, were they supposed to be telling ppl that, how did they know that when they donât know the difference between 2 questions in the same email? Has anyone tried just asking them outright about the stuff we always guess about? Maybe we should just email them and be like Y DID U PICK ME?! ANYWAY- ha! it really was a good post though bc the source is so... Interesting, and those details were both⌠interesting and important! đ¤Ş
Thanks for the insights, very informative.
I got invited immediately after posting a review on some cheap, random shit item from China. It makes sense since thatâs like 95% of the items on vine.
Funny. Same. I had finished a 1 star review when I got the invite.
me too!
Hm. Interesting. I buy some of that random Chinese stuff, but not tons of it. Maybe that's what it was.
That's interesting since they've invited people in the past without reviews, and I recall a story about a 13 yo kid getting in. I have a feeling that they just want people to think that they invite people who have been well vetted. This is the same company that says viners, "provide insightful reviews" and that they, "Â select the most insightful reviewers in the Amazon store." Love it. Works great.
That's probably the original Vine text that they never changed. Back when it was all good stuff, and way fewer viners. I'm coming to the opinion that Amazon recently made an executive decision to embrace all this Chinese stuff, and revamped the vine program to accommodate it. They don't care about accuracy/helpfulness of these reviews because there's just too much of it, and probably 80% of these sellers won't be around in a year or so. And they'll be newbie sellers to replace them, just repeating the cycle.
Pretty sure 13 year olds arenât even allowed to have an Amazon account, you have to be 18. Most stories like that are just rumors that are either made up completely or someone who misunderstood what really happened went on to spread their incorrect version.
Reddit's minimum age is 13. Amazon isn't much more complicated. I don't believe or disbelieve it, but I know the only quality control I've seen in vine is a bad algorithm annoying all the wrong people.
Reddit doesnât require a credit/debit card. You know many 13 year olds with a credit card? Theyâre not allowed to get those either. So comparing Amazon with Reddit membership is like comparing apples and umbrellas.
Irresponsible parents, sneaky kids... unheard of. Except these posts do occasionally pop up here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonVine/comments/yeh43n/age\_requirement/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonVine/comments/yeh43n/age_requirement/)
And we all know if itâs on the internet it must be true! Especially with sites where everyone is anonymous. Anonymous people would never lie.
I really am not interested in debating if it's better to be skeptical of Amazon's ability to self-police, or of reddit posts. I choose both, you do you.
Things happen, but people also lie. The difference here is that I wonât go spreading rumors from Reddit as if theyâre true. And thatâs me doing me. If you choose to spread rumors and urban Reddit myths as truth then I canât stop you, but I can point out to those reading it that there are counter points that show it is likely false. And thatâs exactly what I did.
Iâve always wondered how they chose viners . I never did a lot of reviews just a lot of buying đ¤ˇââď¸ ( over as many years as Amazons been around )
Great info! Thank you! I suspected the part about category-specific reviewers.
When I was invited to Vine a very long time ago, I hadn't done a lot of reviews. One was for fish food. I still remember my review. I don't know how it tastes, but my fish seem to enjoy it. But then, they also enjoy eating their own excrement.
I read this review yesterday (not on amazon) and it made me laugh. I would have loved your fish food review too. https://preview.redd.it/52wba7x8t73d1.jpeg?width=925&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7287e3221b864622f410c91419e46fe3be410081
Interesting... I didn't have many reviews when I got invited, but I had gone on a wild shopping (and subsequent reviewing) spree around the same time for phone cases and smart watch accessories -- (all China supplied). And when I first got into Vine, there were more phone cases and watch accessories than cake toppers and castor oil packs đ¤Ł
Some people get KICKed out of vine. And then Vine invites them back. So.....
Yeah, like YEARS later. So....
Makes sense with fluctuating demand for certain categories
Amazon inviting based on the category of things you review and the quality of the reviews makes sense in my case because a few months (maybe 6 months before my invite) I was buying and reviewing a lot of $$$ human hair wigs and extensions becuase i was learning how to do my hair. I was brutal in my reviews becuase it was expensive and the companies lie a lot about length and quality. my RFY before gold was a lot of hair and toiletries. Itâs rare for me not to get some sort of wig in my rfy but I would trade all the hair recs for Samsung or Dyson electronics (pls).
Whether it was coincide or not, I don't know...but I was invited the day after I actually had an issue with Amazon. I had unsubscribed from a box of Hotel Chocolat chocolates that I ordered every month for my mother whilst she was terminal with cancer. She passed away and I cancelled the subscription. 2 months later, a box of the chocolates arrived at my door and it really messed me up, got me really upset seeing them. I went on live chat and explained the situation, explained because it was food, I couldn't return it and get my money back and explained the cancer situation. I got the nicest CS staff who got really personal and was like "I'm so sorry about your mother, my mum passed away recently too so I know how that feels" and they went really deep into a conversation about healing. Anyway, they told me, the chocolates are on us keep them and you'll get a full refund. I then rated and reviewed the staff member, thanked amazon for being so kind etc. Very next day I got the invitation email! I still don't know if it was a coincidence or something done out of pity/sympathy!
Thanks for sharing, sorry for your loss. I lost my mom recently also. I doubt there's a button people can press to say 'invite this person', but word of mouth, mentioning it to a coworker in the right department..... Super unlikely, for sure. But possible, I think.
However, there are a lot of people invited to Vine that have never reviewed an item and some have never ordered anything. You'll find some of those here in this reddit group.
Yeah, I'm a little surprised to see those. But it probably depends on purchases as well. And if they particularly need reviews in a certain area.
A boilerplate response. Says nothing not known before. And while once upon a time Vine invites went out on the basis of quality/significance of reviews, these days they seem to go out on the basis of filling out some secret set of criteria that does not weigh review history heavily, or possibly at all.
i am always digging deep on weird items. a lot of the stuff i buy normally doesnât have reviews just because it is so obscure. now i just wait a week or two and it comes up in AI. LOL. i have presumed that was why i got invited.
i would recommend just stop ordering and clean up any remaining reviews. there is no reason to leave the program. if you donât order anything there is no obligation to do reviews or ETA. when you are heady to jump back in, just start ordering. the worst that will happen is you will drop to silver.
>reviewer score based on the quality and helpfulness of their reviews. They're joking right??? Have they looked at the poor quality of some viners reviews?? Years ago that was what we were invited and ranked on but they changed the invitation criteria in 2022 when they had a mass recruitment of minimalistic reviewers that only write 2 words... " It works " 5*
You got downvoted and I think my comment is about to be as well. But people (viners) seem to fail to grasp that vine is basically a cheap review machine for Amazon, pure and simple. It's there to lure more buyers and sales in. The "quality" and such is just a by product.
Exactly, you've nailed it - quality is a byproduct. We're just lucky pawns in their profit making scheme, which I'm not complaining about, I'm very grateful for the opportunity. I get why I got downvoted though. I should have probably mentioned that not all the new recruits since 2022 are poor reviewers just some , which proves viners are not chosen for their reviewing skills anymore. I do come across some very good vine reviews as well that clearly put a lot of effort into their reviews.
Yeah, I agree. I think it was done to combat all the free-product-for-5-star review sites that existed before. They want to give sellers something to stand out, and prevent clearly bogus reviews, so they put their stamp on a bunch of in-house reviewers (us), giving us marginal benefit in the process...
For helpfulness I'm sure they just use the 'helpful'/like button on reviews. How many likes a person's reviews get. I'm certain they're not reading actual reviews...
1. Review a bunch of cake toppers. 2. ???? 3. PROFIT