What do you think of when you hear the phrase "top Amazon reviewers". Probably some lady crouched over a rickety Gateway brushing cat hair off her screen. But Amazon's citizen critics are courted by companies like their mainstream counterparts.

Cornell professor Trevor Pinch studied 166 of the top 1,000 Amazon reviewers. he found that:

Some 85 percent of the reviewers Pinch surveyed had received free products from publishers, agents, authors, and manufacturers. And 78 percent of them often or always reviewed such free products. Some 70 percent of the reviewers were male; 40 percent identified themselves as writers; and 11 percent were retirees.

The whole thing seems very much more refined than the gangs of elite Yelpers who descend on free food like locusts. Probably because they're readers, not eaters.

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