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.