blippy shares your purchases
In 2009 Facebook users revolted against the Facebook Beacon a Facebook features that lets users share their purchases with their networks. A year later, I have signed up for Blippy which lets users sign up and link their accounts with companies like Visa and Mastercard Credit Cards, iTunes, Amazon, Zappos and even Netflix. They can then post updates that they can share and discuss with their social networks. They recently have moved from “invite only” beta to opening it up for people to sign up. This is a pretty big change of heart for consumers. What a difference a year has made for people to move from worrying about privacy to openly flaunting their purchases.
On Blippy you ave a choice of not adding your credit card and just using the other accounts. Adding a credit card definitely opens up all your purchases to your audience. You can set your profile to protect purchases to only let people whom you approve follow your purchases.
Philip Kaplan founder said in an interview in the Wall Street Journal:
‘Well, people buy interesting stuff all the time; why don’t we show people?’ That’s how the idea came about. We thought it was kind of cool; we called it ‘passive sharing.’ You don’t need to go to Facebook to share content. You just swipe your credit card and you share content.
Phil Kaplan also says “The biggest risk is that their purchases are totally mundane and you’re really super boring. At least go to a bar or restaurant!” I think that is the reason why I will keep my profile private so you won’t know how much I am not spending. 
blippy in action
There are other players who are definitely watching the social shopping scene. Payvments which Frank Gruber mentioned to me when he attended the PayPal X conference in November 2009 is a e-commerce solution for Facebook.
My social shopping is limited to standing in front of the Cable modem counters at Best Buy and tweeting Linksys or Motorla?” and of course 6 people responded and 5 of them said “Linksys” – guess which modem I bought? Do you have a social shopping experience to share?
Editor’s Note: This article was written by Shashi Bellamkonda. He blogs at:blog.networksolutions.com and shashi.name. You can follow him on Twitter at:@shashib.
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