They certainly were clearly integrating rather than placing products, and it made sense given that that generation is very naturally taking part in the act of documenting their own lives through mobile technology. That being said, as natural as it may be for young people to document their lives this way, it wasn’t natural for that documentation to be the most interesting thing to be showing viewers of the web series. There was an episode later in the series that involved a scavenger hunt that did a better job than some other instances (building a broader conceit around why the use of mobile phones was integral to the event), but often the need to document the use of mobile technology felt unnatural even if the presence of that mobile technology was itself natural.

And yes, I certainly don’t think they were chasing trade reports, but my understanding of the situation was that they were eager to respond to the Variety review in particular to emphasize their evolving editing/distribution strategies—as much as reviews don’t matter to their bottom line, they nonetheless want to build a repeatable business model and present themselves on the cutting edge, and trade reviews matter to those optics if not to the social media-savvy kids to whom the series was pitched.