Blippy…yes its insane but it might just be the future
You know how when you go shopping and you buy something and you, like me, often think to yourself, “Gee, I wish there was a way I could make this purchase public, showing everyone what I bought, where I bought it, how much I bought it for and when I bought it.” Oh I know you have wanted to do that for a long time. Well, now you can. Enter Blippy.
Blippy is a new social site that lets you enter your credit cards into its system and then every time you purchase something with those credit cards, its published to your feed just like a Twitter account. Don’t believe me? Check this out:
Yes, seems our friend here likes his Starbucks and overpays at Taco Bell. Seems insane doesn’t it, to put all that information up on the web like that.
As my friends know I’m a pretty early adopter. But this is a stretch even for me. In fact, I’m clearly in Stage 1 of Social Denail when it comes to Blippy. Oh, I’ve gotten fully into the whole check-in thing, and I tweet all the time and share personal information on the web. But I’m not sure about putting my purchases up for just anyone to see…yet.
Here’s why a service like Blippy is interesting. The future of digital marketing, and really marketing/advertising as a whole, is going to be people-based. WE will be the media.
It’s already starting. When I want to decide what movie to go see, I ask my friends on Facebook. I find out about new restaurants to eat at through Foursquare and Yelp. I learn about the benefits of AT&T Uverse (which I’ll be considering heavily soon) through my Twitter friends. I don’t need ads for these things, I have the ads, they’re my network!
What hasn’t happened yet is something that makes it easy for me to recommend the products and services that I buy, and reward me for doing so. If I have a great experience at a restaurant, I want it to be extremely easy for me to tell all my friends and the public at large. I then want to somehow be credited with the exposure that I just gave that restaurant. Why should companies pay millions of dollars to put their ad on TV (which we don’t watch and when we see it, we don’t care) rather than pay the people who use the service to promote it?
Until I saw Blippy I thought we were far off from this future. But what Blippy has done is made it very easy to do the first part of the equation. If they head down the right path, they might just have something here.
The accountability here is staggering, to merchants , to users, to marketers…. I don't think society, marketing, and commerce in general are ready for that yet…. but I like the thought of it.
I can only imagine a parent wanting easy spending tracking of a child for application.. Marketing processes seem bleak with this.. Is there some actual usage here I'm missing?
I'm not sure Blippy itself is going to be as beneficial as other new tech we're seeing, but what I love about their product is that its automatic. Too many things in the social world today are manual. I have to tag people in a photo on Facebook – face recognition like in iPhoto should make that automatic. I have to “check-in” when I go to places on Foursquare – that should be automatic. Etc.
So I think Blippy is heading us in a direction I like from that standpoint.
Hi, i know this article was posted a while ago…but, am really interested in the concept of blippy’s idea, and am currently working on something similar to blippy, but gives the user the ability to personally choose what purchases via card to post on the site.
I wanted to ask you one question, regarding the recommending product/services idea after experiencing something great, and being rewarded for it (your second last paragraph), do you think this idea has the potential to become something big? I really hope you can help me with this, I would be very grateful.
I’m a big believer in the idea that rewarding people for recommending a product or service could be HUGE. I’m not sure how it will play out, or what the right solution is, but I think it’s a place worth exploring for sure.
Best of luck, I hope you solve it!