Share Your Purchases with Blippy [INVITES]

Blippy helps you share all of your purchases online so that people can see exactly what you’re buying. On it’s face, it sounds like a completely idiotic idea and many have said as much. What you buy is your personal business and most of us have been raised to keep it that way. But, in a time where we often share more than our parents ever would have, maybe this is just the next logical step. It could also mean the end of our privacy as we know it.

How It Works

Before we go getting all hot and bothered about Big Brother, over sharing, and the end of privacy online, let’s talk a little about how this thing works. You basically plug in your accounts on sites like iTunes, Amazon, Zappos, Netflix, Blockbuster, GoDaddy, SeamlessWeb, and Wine Library. You can even get crazy with it and give Blippy direct access to your credit, debit, or bank account. Don’t worry, Blippy is serious about your security. They can’t access your information. After that, Blippy pulls in purchases you make on those accounts and you can optionally share them with your friends.

If you haven’t run away screaming yet, you can start following some active users to see what they’re buying. You can Like and comment on each person’s purchases, just like FriendFeed. As you can see in this screenshot, it looks like there is a friendly competition going on to buy the cheapest item and Matt Cutts seems to be in the lead with $0.49 at Amazon for buying a pronged folder (clicking the item name actually takes you to Amazon to view it).

Why?

There is so much vitriol against Blippy around the blogosphere that it’s actually amusing. I know some people are really serious about their privacy, but geez, you’d think this was a service that put a live webcam in your bathtub. On the one hand, I can see why people have such a serious reaction. We have all been taught that our credit cards and purchases are private. People are scared of this information getting out there.

On the other hand, how often do we talk about stuff we buy to our friends? How often do people post status updates when they get a new gadget or toy to play with? Don’t we import stuff like our Netflix activity and music plays to Facebook, FriendFeed, and Twitter? This is just the next logical step. When you invest money in something, it shows others that that something may have value. This type of information can be very useful to others and will probably be very valuable to Blippy in the near future.

So, what happens when you buy that fancy new blow-up doll or your friends start to notice you go through a 30-pack of beer every week? Those are questions that need to be addressed. Blippy founder Philip Kaplan suggested having a “social” credit card and a “private” credit card in an interview with TechCrunch. I think the service would better benefit from fine grained privacy controls, though. At the moment, you can either authorize individual users or just not share anything. It would be better if you dig deeper and mark individual purchases or types of purchases as public or private.

In any case, Blippy could be a useful and interesting service. It’s still in private beta and has time and room to grow. I think we all just need to take a deep breath, calm down, and give it a chance. If you’re not ready to share at this level, don’t.

UPDATE:

Blippy hooked us up with 50 invites, just use the code BLACKWEB20.