February 22nd, 2010
Review: Blippy — The Whole Wide World Knows What You Are Buying
New site Blippy.com is all about divulging the private and provocative details of your financial life online. Think of Blippy as Twitter meets Mint.com, in which you link your credit card accounts to Blippy so transactions show up automatically for others to view and comment on. Everything from your $13.00 Lady Gaga CD purchased on iTunes.com to your $600 Playstation 3 from Best Buy will be posted on Blippy’s homepage for viewers to track. But, how will this be helpful to your financial life? Believe or not, Blippy acts as a shopper’s conscience and a deal-hunter’s best friend.
Blippy has a simple, straight forward registration, which– did I mention?– is free. Users link their credit card or online accounts, such as Netflix or iTunes, to Blippy.com and every time you make a transaction, the amount and location of the purchase shows up right on the homepage. You can comment on purchases, such as thoughts on a music choice or favorite dish at a local restaurant. Users can also hide purchases so only select friends can see.
For some, Blippy is a shopper’s conscience. Knowing that friends will see what you are buying may help curb some nonessential or extravagant purchases. Its a social way to keep you and your spending habits in check, and you could wind up trying to keep up with the Jones. For example, knowing people will see your $550 impulse designer shoe purchase may make some think twice before swiping at the register, while others will swipe, swipe, and swipe. For shopaholics, tracking shopping habits can be therapeutic and a practical guide to finding and sharing buzz about hip stores, hard-to-find deals, and the latest product. Since users can comment, Blippy is a corkboard for the latest and sometimes hardest to find consumer-related news and tips.
While Blippy has the potential to connect consumers through social chatter about where and what to buy, it also makes Blippy a data mine for companies. Not only will retailers and credit card issuers monitor consumer spending habits, but they will also be looking to gleam feedback and reactions to their products. For example, retailers can figure which consumers are responding most vocally to an offer or product or understand more about the offer value they need to deliver to engage more in-market consumers. We sure hope issuers aren’t planning to eavesdrop on these conversations to affect decisions like limiting credit or cutting rewards programs, but one never knows.
Blippy impacts consumer relationships by sharing aspects of consumer behavior through shared real-time purchase history. Blippy’s powerful all-seeing eye will even tell co-workers that you buying drinks at the golf club instead of “sick” at home, and tell friends that you didn’t cover lunch earlier because you went on a shopping spree later. There is a great amount of data tied into the purchases we make, and Blippy dares to take it social.
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This website seems like corporate marketer’s dreams come true – can’t really imagine that it will benefit actual users all that much unless they were just itching for a way to relinquish the last shreds of privacy on the internet available to them. I would say it’s funny but I think it’s not intended as a joke is it?
I’m amazed that in a free society people willingly give up their privacy … I guess we all want to be celebrities.
If anything, I suspect Blippy could have the opposite of its intended effect — people happily spending and bragging about the “Savings” when the only true savings is to keep your credit card in your pocket/purse.