Probably not, but how many of those 900+ reviews are from Yahoo's 12,000 employees?

I know some mobile app companies will have a few of their own people write reviews. But if someone from the Yahoo Axis team really sent out a mass company-wide email asking for fake reviews like this, someone is bound to cry foul (and forward the email to ATD).

They don't have to ask for fake reviews. They just have to say "Hey our cool new app dropped into AppStore today. Check it out and review it if you like it." Yahooers might genuinely like it and give it a high score.

It should be taken as a good sign if 900+ employees are still motivated enough to download and review the app.

they can pay contractors on odesk to write these reviews.

Which would also leak. Guaranteed.

900 is not _that_ big. If we assume that 400 outsiders gave it a 3.5, and 500 yahoos gave it 5 star rating, it adds up to 4.33 average.

And 500 is a tiny fraction of the total number of people at Yahoo.

Yahoo isnt the type of company to make its employees rate its apps. Maybe you should be more open-minded. 900 is pretty big for 2 days after launch.

No, I did not mean it in that way at all. If I was of a mid to senior level executive or developer at Yahoo, I would definitely rate this Axis up, just because of loyalty towards the company, if nothing else. I would also urge (but definitely not force) my team members to try it, and chances are they would feel the same way.

All that put together would add up to a lot of votes, wouldn't it?