blippy

Sorry, but Blippy is a Stupid Idea

By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments Tags: , , ,

Confession: I’m a social media junkie – an enthusiastic blogger, active Twitter user, reluctant member of the ever-growing Facebook empire, and YouTube watcher. I like to share my thoughts and interesting content and online services.

The chances, however, of me using Blippy are zero, nil, nadda, nunca.

Why anyone would give a third-party their credit card information so their purchases can be tracked and broadcast is bizarre. Over the past week, I have been beating the drum about the changes that Facebook made to its API that now make more of your information public, and Blippy is just another strange part of the “tell-all” ecosystem that has emerged in recent years.

Really, what are the benefits of telling the world about your purchases? Seriously, what’s really in it for you, your friends or strangers who see this information.

Is it vanity? Is it a way to provide real-world suggestions about the best products and services to purchase? Is it just another creature of consumerism, which seems to have survived the recession relatively unscathed? Or is Blippy just another beast to feed our growing addiction to sharing.

I’m sure there are people who get some value from Blippy by getting a better idea of what people are buying so they can make better purchasing decisions but let’s be real here: Blippy’s in the business of collecting massive amounts of data so it can aggregate and leverage it to make money. In other words, your activity fuels the fire.

To me, the common theme between Facebook and Blippy is how the balance between the benefits offered to users, and what these companies get from all their users’ activity is starting to tilt in the direction of the companies. While users get a few social media crumbs, Facebook and Blippy are gorging at the data buffet.

By the way, here’s Blippy mea culpa in the wake of reports that some of its users credit card information was accidentally disclosed via Google.

Hello, Social Media Addiction; Goodbye, Privacy

By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments Tags: , , , ,

If Foursquare wasn’t enough to meet the need for a new and shiny social media play-thing, there’s also lot of excitement in Blippy, which lets users publicly share their purchases – e.g Joe Smith just spent $18.85 at La Senza.

I’m a social create with a reasonably healthy appetite for sharing ideas, content and interesting Web services but I have a limited appetite when it comes to expanding into social networks beyond Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Flickr. I have tried Foursquare and taken a look at Blippy but my social plate is currently full.

The big question is how much social is enough. How many places do you need or want to share many or every aspect of your personal and professional lives? My take is that we’re living in a time when public is becoming the default while private is eroding, and that’s not entirely a good thing.

Take Blippy, for example. There are benefits to sharing your shopping activity – other people can see your purchases to help their own shopping decisions. But what’s really in it for Blippy users other than being seen as early users? What do they get from telling the world they spent $27.89 at iTunes? If this is the way we’re headed, it’s only a matter a time before someone launches Paybook, a new social network in which people publicly talk about how much money they make.

The bottom line is that social media and sharing everything with everyone is like a drug; the more services you use, the more you share. Before long, your private life disappears. Tweeting becomes addictive to the point where you’re doing it dozens of times a day without even thinking about it – it just becomes part of your very public existence.

Maybe I’m trying to live in two worlds – the new world of total disclosure, and the old world in which people actually had public and private lives. Maybe trying to bridge both worlds will have an impact on my digital brand but this balancing act feels like the right approach.

Update: In contrast to my pragmatic skepticism about new social media networks, Mashable has a breathlessly enthusiastic post about how Foursquare is “changing the world”. As well, here’s a good post from TechCrunch’s MG Siegler about the “social paradox” of location, and how the more people you follow on a service such as Foursquare, the less value it has. Siegler also has a post about a new desktop application for Foursquare called FoursquareX, which Foursquare “addicts” need to get “immediately”.


What’s the Twitter of 2010?

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Uncategorized 8 Comments Tags: , , , ,

newSo now that Twitter is on the verge of becoming “So last year!”, what’s the new shiny, social media bauble for 2010?

Is it Foursquare, which is pushing the “Here’s where I’m located” phenomena with a service/game that encourages people to become the “mayor” of anywhere and anything? Given the chatter I’ve seenon Twitter about someone becoming the “Mayor of The Gap”, Foursquare looks to have some potential.

What about Posterous, which captured a lot of buzz a few months ago as a cross between Twitter and blog, particularly when well-known blogger Steve Rubel unveiled plans to use Posterous instead of blogging. While Posterous continues to launch new features, the buzz seems to have died, making it a unlikely 2010 social media “what’s next” candidate.

Another candidate currently on the fringes is Hot Potato, which offer a service for real-time social collaboration among people who can share an interest in an event as it’s happening. Leveraging wireless technology, Hot Potato users can filter by location, social graph or “presence” at an event.

Then there’s Blippy, a new (and strange) social media service (in beta) that lets people share their credit card purchases. For example, instead of doing a tweet about your Boxing Day activity, Blippy would automatically announce that you had just spent $49.85 at Banana Republic.

What about Google Wave? There’s been lots of buzz given it’s another Google service but so far Google Wave has been underwhelming, mostly because few services have been created to give Google Wave some sizzle.

So, what are your candidates as the best-thing-since-slice-bread social media services for 2010?

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