This is the kind of thing that Amazon could, and should, do. If they become very transparent with Vine then I think this could be a good success. But at least to date Vine feels very opaque and that's not a good thing.
But this assumes that Amazon removes people from the Vine program if their reviews aren't voted helpful. I don't think that's a safe assumption and furthermore, it might even be the case that people are removed for a lot of negative reviews. After all, the companies are paying to have their products in Vine. If word gets around that Vine produces a lot of negative reviews then companies pull out of the program and Amazon loses a revenue stream.
Yeah, I was looking at ~$250 products that had tons of Vine reviews. If you're getting something worth $250 free to keep I gotta thing that's going to affect how you review it.
I do the same. But many people don't have the same level of sophistication or simply don't have the time to spend so they just look at the aggregate review and buy the top-rated product. That why I think Vine is potentially subversive.
I'd love to see Amazon reviews have a HN/Reddit/Digg-style up/down vote system where crap reviews automatically drop off and aren't factored into the overall score.
Thanks for all the great comments on the article everyone. As an aside, for those interested in customer development I wrote up an article a while back with a ton of links to blog posts, podcasts, etc.
