Blippy The Financial Version Of Twitter Reveals Your Credit Purchases To The Public

But Nobody Asked “Who Cares?”

Blippy currently has about 100,000 registered users, and only about 30% of those users have cared to share their credit card purchase records. In an report from “ TechCrunch,” CEO Ashvin Kumar admits that the numbers aren’t spectacular. Traffic has levelled off and he is concerned about the future of the service. He admits that Blippy never really had a clear business model except a hopeful “Build it and they will come.” attitude. But, it turned out that not many folks really care who is shopping, what they’re buying, where they’re buying it, nor how much they’re paying for it.

Blippy never really had a clear business model except
a hopeful “Build it and they will come.” attitude.

Blippy Briefly

Back in 2009, when online social networking in many different forms was taking off, Blippy came on the scene to share attention with Facebook, Twitter, TellMe, Groupon, and many others. The media found the concept of Blippy intriguing and the hype their news stories generated where largely responsible for the spikes in Blippy usage. But interest soon faded.

Sharing But Not Really Caring

The concept is interesting on first take. A user makes a purchase on a credit card and the information regarding that purchase is shared in a Twitter-like feed to interested friends. The information includes the product purchased, when and where it was purchased, and the cost.

“Hey, dude! That was some heavy-duty spending at
the jewellery shop the other evening! Who’s the lucky gal?”

If they like, interested users can respond to their friend’s shopping experience. If someone lands a good deal, that information could be helpful. But the entertainment value was supposedly a large part of the service. For instance: “Hey, dude! That was some heavy-duty spending at the jewellery shop the other evening! Who’s the lucky gal?”

Security Breach

To make the service work, a user had to enter a credit card number, or numbers, along with the attendant password – a pretty scary concept in our security conscious world. Indeed, some folks were compromised, their numbers and passwords made available briefly through some back door associated with a Google search. Not many suffered any real harm and the problem was quickly solved, but that didn’t stop a whole lot of users from hurriedly withdrawing their account information from the service.

The Blippy team side-stepped a primary rule of the
techie startup milieu: Make something people need or want.

Valued at $46.2 Million

Blippy was able to raise $13 million (USD) in funding and at one point its valuation was at $46.2 million (USD). Now it has moved from a purchase-sharing site to a review-sharing site, with users posting their own remarks about their recent purchases. The Blippy team has stopped innovating upon Blippy, and has ventured into other products for the social e-commerce venues, but they aren’t ready to make any announcements just yet. CEO Kumar went on to say that sharing credit card purchases with friends doesn’t solve any problems he can think of. So, the Blippy team sort of side-stepped a primary rule of the techie startup milieu: Make something people really need or really want.

Blippy, Ping, and Swipely

The Blippy model, and perhaps those of its two main competitors, Ping and Swipely, has to be rethought or retooled or abandoned altogether. Indeed, in a comment reported in “TechCrunch,” Swipely CEO, Angus Davis said, “We don’t think people want to share their purchases period. I don’t know how to be more emphatic than that.” So, we’ll just have to wait and see if the Blippy startup can now do a quick restart. The firm’s present investors will be included as the firm retools, according to TechCrunch.

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