Twitter has a long way to go before it reaches the natural end of it's life. However, new service Blippy is prophesying that end by refining Twitter into a niche appeal service. Blippy is revolutionary because no other online service has given someone the ability to publicly track all of their purchases and the purchases of their friends in real time.
What is Blippy and how does it work?After receiving a Blippy Invite Code, you're asked to link the accounts you have at stores such as iTunes, Amazon, Zappos, Netflix, Godaddy and others. You can also link a credit card or bank account.Linking an account allows Blippy to monitor your purchases. Similar to tweeting, the purchases in your linked account can be viewed by your Blippy "friends" to be commented on and reviewed.
Here's why Blippy is cool:You might be thinking to yourself, "OMG - I don't want anyone to know about my Netflix rental history"; that's what I thought too until I used Blippy. Blippy's purpose isn't to monitor all of your purchases. Rather, Blippy wants to tell your audience "look at how cool I am, I just bought this".It's scary to think that people will know what you buy when and for how much, but this initial fear is one of the reasons that I think Blippy will succeed. The shock value is enough to get a few early adopters into the system and the community that is forming shows the value in giving Blippy and the general public a view of your purchases.Beyond showing people what you bought, Blippy takes point from Twitter by showing your friends what you purchased. However, it gets interesting when people start to comment on your purchases and discuss them. Again, this sounds intimidating, but check this out:
See what's happening there? Some Internet noob named Jason Calacanis purchased a new camera to take the best photos possible of his new daughter. He purchased the camera, broadcasted his Amazon purchase on Blippy and opened a conversation about it. What followed was some very sound advice on lenses and even a note by some other unknown guy, Leo Laporte.How cool is that, right? We know what someone we like purchased, where, for how much and Blippy friends got to have a conversation about it. Beyond the shock value of having instanat access to what we buy and when we buy it, Blippy will live or die in these types of conversations and interactions people like Jason and Leo have with their audiences.Of course, this isn't without problem. Similar to Twitter, the user interface of the Blippy conversation limits the depth of what people are saying. After Leo said to Jason, "[You] should have bought the 5D. Seriously.", Jason started a question on Mahalo Answers asking how his camera was different that resulted in significantly deeper, well researched answers.What do I think about Blippy?I mentioned at the start that Blippy is the evolution of Twitter. In it's current state, that's exactly what I think about it. When a product or service reaches critical mass, competitors break the market leader apart into smaller services tailored for specific functions. Online, this is called "niche market product creation" and is exactly what Blippy is doing. Blippy could have easily been marketed as a Twitter API based App service that allowed people to broadcast the details of their retail purchases to their Twitter friends. By developing their own niche microblogging social network based on purchases, they're taking a risk that could pay off. If heavy social mavens such as Laporte and Calacanis attract their friends and fans to have conversations, this could become a very interesting project. Years down the road, the obvious "end game" for Blippy goes one of two ways. Either Twitter buys them after they have ammased enough regular conversation that Blippy becomes powerful or they quickly monitize with the retail companies that they interact with. The less obvious path (and the one my money is on) is that a smaller credit card company (not Visa) will buy Bilppy for access to the data and to use as a marketing tool to differentiate their product from larger competitors.
Check out Blippy. Grab a beta invite code and sign up. My crystal ball says that we're going to start to see a lot of integrated services similar to Blippy in the near future.
Posted via web from Rob Brown
