Doug Winfield on January 19, 2010

Good luck. I think you are potentially giving up far more than you are getting back from this service. I think you should always make an active choice when using social media. Automatic tweets of purchases is a bridge too far for me.

Matt on January 19, 2010

I think for people who need or want accountability to be successful in changing behaviors, this has potential to be a great tool. For those of us who’d rather keep our Buffy the Vampire Slayer Netflix habit private, we’ll probably sit this one out.

Pete Voss on January 19, 2010

Great post!

I wish you luck on your Blippy adventure. I’m not as brave as you to set this up with my checking account, as I don’t want people judging me on my expenses.

Personally, I think I’ll stick to Twitter where I can boast my “cool” purchases with personalized praise and leave my not so cool purchases to myself so that I can remorse in my lonesome.

Thanks for sharing Mike!

Micheal Foley on January 19, 2010

Doug, Matt and Pete: It’s not as bad as you think. Blippy gives me control of what gets posted. I can hide anything I might find embarrassing or pause my posts if I buy a gift for someone and want to keep it a surprise. The point is that I have control, and I only share as much as I am comfortable with.

You can sign up and share nothing if you want and still take part in the conversations happening around other people’s purchases. For example, check out all the conversations happening around iJustine’s Blippy activity: http://blippy.com/ijustine

Mark on January 19, 2010

It is an interesting notion and certainly has its uses, but blippy falls well into the camp of TMI. What’s more, my family would take great exception with providing such personal details about how we spend our money. Not a good formula for harmonious living.

ErinB on January 19, 2010

I need to think about this more…I can see why Blippy may not be an obvious favorite for everyone – I don’t want my family/friends let alone my husband seeing my every debit/credit move…(Yes, I said husband. We don’t tell each other every little thing – omitting a few of the day’s financial details can be oh so sexy). Am I condoning hidden spending? Certainly not. But…if I happen to pick up a new pair of shoes some may consider this season’s trend – it’s possible I’ll refer to them as a wardrope staple to my sweetie and promise to wear them for ever and ever. And if he wants to tell me we NEED a PS3 for the blu-ray capabilities – so be it.
Okay, how many people are now betting on the shelf life of my marriage? Rude.

I do see the benefits though. I have a fashion-forward-friend (fff – sorry I had to, it looks so cute and please, it’s so WE) who lives in London and every time I see her (twice a year) we have to spend 50% of our precious little time together asking each other, “Where’s that from? Cute! How much? When did you get it? …I wonder if my size is still available…” It’d be great to get that time back to make room for really probing questions: do you have time for a quick pedi?
Husbands and wives keep it real – just not Blippy real; fff’s everywhere, unite! Go Blippy.

Mia on January 19, 2010

When does all of this just become “white noise”? I have friends on FB where I block their feeds because I don’t want to know what they had for breakfast, what they bought grocery shopping, their dinner plans and their high score on Bejeweled Blitz. I can’t even imagine caring to have that much more granular detail in their lives nor they mine.

Micheal Foley on January 19, 2010

Mia: Nobody is forcing you to follow. If you don’t want Blippy feeds, don’t sign up. If you don’t want your Facebook friends’ updates, unfriend him or her. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s not a failure of social media. It’s a failure of your ability to filter the signal from the noise. If you have a filter that works, I’d argue that you’d be better off sharing and collaborating freely with the world than not.

Carol on January 19, 2010

Hmmm, Even before I read through all these responses, I thought “privacy invasion.” I know what you’re thinking Foley, I don’t have to share what I don’t want to and you are absolutely right. That said, I think that’s the very reason so many people would opt out. Plus, I’m an awesome money manager

luigis on January 19, 2010

Mike, I love your “daring” and being right out in front with Blippy. I don’t think I’m ready for that yet, but I love the washing machine cycle-tweet. There’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning and realizing the clothes you’d hope to wear to work that day are still in the washer because you forgot to put them in the dryer the night before. Thanks for a great read!

Micheal Foley on January 19, 2010

Hey Luigi! Thanks for the nice comment. As an ode to you on your birthday (and getting a little older), here’s a link to info about an Internet-connected pacemaker: http://gizmodo.com/5334744/worlds-first-wireless-internet+connected-pacemaker-installed

Enjoy!

Heather Snow on January 19, 2010

I saw your tweet on this last night Mike, and spent some time thinking about Blippy and the larger societal implications it represents (after perusing your credit card transactions, of course .

Perhaps I’m “old school,” but here’s where I net out: Right now social media is the shiny object, and with it an invigorating new freedom we call “transparency.” Calling on companies to be more transparent is cool, if not 100% realistic. But I have a few problems with the direction we’re heading as we jump on the Blippy bandwagon, the biggest being how glibly we forsake our personal privacy. Wither Big Brother? Didn’t we all ready 1984 in high school? Of course this data is immensely valuable to marketers – we are marketers, we get that. But there’s an insidious side to data collection too. Right now there are laws in place to protect our data – albeit eroding. Most of us contributing to and reading this blog are not old enough to have first-hand memories of McCarthyism, but we should have read about it and history should warn us to not be foolish here. Of course Blippy is opt-in. Of course you can be selective in your feeds. But the trend towards glib disregard for the value of data and privacy is what troubles me – that and making it sooo easy to mine.

Micheal Foley on January 19, 2010

Heather: Interesting thoughts. I would argue that the more open and transparent I am, the harder it is for anyone (even government) to pull any shenanigans on me without my community noticing.

Tim Reha on January 19, 2010

Hi Michael,

I checked out Blippy when you mentioned it on Twitter.

My first gut feeling is that the the grand social media experiment is getting a little to “big brother” for my tastes. Here is my input.

PROS:

The type of transaction history that Blippy aggregates may have some good “social”uses such as a recommendation based on friends trusted social filter. Perhaps the system will alert you to sweet deals on goods based on human and artificial intelligent data.

CONS:

When I look at your purchase history above, I immediately think that your insurance company would monitor your Taco Bell and 7-11 purchases and assume you eat junk food. Since the information is public, they would have a right to raise your insurance rates.

My advertising brain kicks in and knows that this data would be used for real-time location based, mobile advertising in the future. Why would you want to give advertisers this information away for free?

The other point is that we tend to “set and forget” these services. This is dangerous because with all of the interconnected web services, we may forget who has access to our information.

Another fear is our employers already often require us to have RFID badges to “track us” on the corporate campus. Did you know that your if your employer provides for and buys your new Metro pass that they get access to your bus travel data? So I see that you were at the “Mac Store”, yet your employer’s main client is Microsoft. Will this data be used against you?

What about security? You let them have your bank account data? WHAT? The Chinese, Russians, Brazilians not to mention our own citizens are constantly hacking into our web servers for fun or for criminal activity. Have you considered identity theft?

Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook recently tried to pull a con-job on us in his blog post about privacy being gone. He wants us to believe that we should just roll over and let Facebook sell our personal data finger print in exchange for the luxury of using the service. Our own USA government has run illegal activities over the past eight years to take our private data. Then they mask the Patriot Act as something good, when in fact our founding fathers (and mothers) would roll over in their graves if they knew what was going on because the law is totally against Freedom and Privacy.

Hell, the CIA’s venture fund In-Q-Tel just invested in Visible Technologies. What does that mean? -end rant-

OTHER

The “social media on a chip” is very interesting. We are going through a paradigm shift where a linux web server, HD camera and microphone with SKYPE is available on a chip embedded in a new LG TV. Thus, we dont need a PC to have an HD video conference with grandma.

Social media sites like Facebook are integrated deeply in our phones like the new Google phone. It is becoming a requirement for many products to provide tight integration so “social media” is a standard feature. Social media on a chip get’s really interesting because of all of the sensors that may be embedded on a chip these days.

If this interests you, check out the Arduino chips – “Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software.” See http://mashable.com/2009/06/01/social-media-future-tech/

In the future I believe we will even more integration with computer vision systems that will know who we are because they will scan our photos on Facebook, flicker, etc and know our voices, GPS coordinates and more. There will be some good coming out of this like “Interactive Social Media http://bit.ly/712Qs .

I think we will see in the next 5 years new “HD iEye Glasses” by Apple that have HD cameras in the nose bridge and auto tagging systems with eye tracking and augmented reality. We may just become “Gargoyles” from the book Snow Crash by constantly broadcasting all of our data points as content. Then we will have an augmented layer of reality based on the social world.

Part of the people on the planet will just go all in with their data. The other part will be fighting a cyber-war with the digital world to remain private. London already has 10000 security cameras that don’t actually prevent crime. The just cause a crime which is our total loss of privacy.

Warm Regards, Tim

Colleen C on January 19, 2010

Great post!

I like the idea of creating sharable content for people to gather round and discuss, especially content around the latest films or fashion. But I’m a little hesitant to give too much financial data for fear of identity theft. (Heard too many horror stories from my IT security savvy hubby.) So I’m going to wait and see on Blippy. I’ll share my info on sites like FourSquare and foodspotting.com.

Collecting my data and mashing into a digital body language profile has its pros and cons. I’ll like getting targeted advertising from my fave brands, but I’ll be tempted to spend more!

Creating more convenience content (e.g. washing machine, courier tracking, pizza delivery) makes sense. It’s a great differentiator. But businesses will have to see the ROI before we see mass adoption.

With all this additional content that’s sure to be coming my way, I hope we see some fantastic filtering apps!

Micheal Foley on January 19, 2010

Hey Tim:

Thanks for the insanely long-winded comment!

Re: insurance companies: Perhaps I should have to pay more for insurance. Transparency cuts both ways.

Giving info to advertisers for free: If advertisers spend less money on targeting and ad buys and market research, they can spend more money making the product better and/or pass the savings on to the consumer in the form of lower prices.

Government access to information: Giving EVERYONE access to my information is better than just the government having access to it. If the government becomes evil, it has to overpower all of society, not just one person at a time.

Security: How is this any less secure than the bank having access to the information? It’s on a server either way.

The sooner the masses adopt this way of thinking, the sooner the masses have more power than corporations or governments.

Jessica Evans on January 19, 2010

I hear you about the opportunity this content affords researchers, Mike. Though not specific to the individual, like Blippy is, The NYT recently featured an interesting breakdown of Netflix rentals, neighborhood by neighborhood (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/10/nyregion/20100110-netflix-map.html?scp=1&sq=Netflix,%20data,%20map&st=cse). The multiple comments to that post are interestingly reflective of this one.

Perhaps a baby step to Blippy is Mint.com–which I love, in that it provides a private stream of all of your spending.

Colleen C on January 19, 2010

Hi Mike,

Regarding your comment about giving info to advertisers for free, “If advertisers spend less money on targeting and ad buys and market research, they can spend more money making the product better and/or pass the savings on to the consumer in the form of lower prices.”

I’d like to think this would happen, but don’t you think orgs would tempted to just increase their profit margins? Too bad all financial reports weren’t public. Then we could see who’s providing good value and who’s not. I look forward to that day!

Shauna on January 19, 2010

Great post, Mike!

This is a really interesting topic. I tend to lean more toward mindcasting versus lifecasting so I don’t post a lot of updates about what I’m buying. I’ve chosen not to link Foursquare to Twitter even though a few people have urged me that way. But, for people who are more skilled at lifecasting (and are more interesting than me!), I think this is a fascinating development. I look forward to seeing how it works out. With people sharing more of this type of information, will companies need to be even more accountable with their products and services? It opens up more discussion about their brand, at the very least.

Micheal Foley on January 19, 2010

Hi Colleen,

I did think of that, and I’m fine with it. Companies that choose shareholders over customers are easy targets for competitors. The company that delivers the best product at the best price wins. The one that offers a crappy product at a high price won’t have any profits to deliver to shareholders.

Jeremy Meyers on January 19, 2010

This reminds me very much of an opt-in Facebook Beacon. It’s interesting from a data portability standpoint.

Also reminds me of our own Tac Anderson’s visualization of the fragmentation of content creation

Jeremy Meyers on January 19, 2010

er… This Tac Anderson post.

Tim Reha on January 19, 2010

Hi Mike,

Thanks for commenting on my comment. Here is another spazm for your amusment

RE: Government access to information:

I think you are confusing the deep data that Facebook, Google and Blippy own -versus- the shallow data that the “public”is given access. We do not get access top Google’s link data nor Facebooks interaction data. They just give is a little slice of the really powerful data, so we “think” we have access. Nor do we have clusters of super computers to process the data. Thus, we do not get the full fire hose of data, nor the expensive custom data analytics tools nor time do even approach how data is used by FB and Google. Perhaps your perception is skewed because you are “in the business” and you are testing out things to send to the borg?

As for the Government and our personal data. Well, lets just say I learned a few “things” as the founder and host of the only Homeland Security Venture Forums in Seattle back in 2002. In-Q-Tel, the Washington Military Department, etc. were guests. Google to find what Pointdexter was trying to do with our data with the TIA program, our tax dollars and you will be pissed.

Re: Advertising – I would agree that giving advertisers more data perhaps would tighten up the traditional ad spend waste. But it is not in the business model for say Sir Martin Sorell to “spend less”. WPP group has rolled up TNS Taylor Nelson Sofres along with dozens of digital players to shore up their model to more data driven. They will not try to spend less of their clients money, they will just try to spend it smarter. You are invited to me in Russia in May 2010 to meet Sir Martin Sorell in person and ask him yourself. http://www.iaamoscow2010.com/

Re Security: My guess is that banks have a little bit better security that a “starve up” like Blippy. Multi-billion dollar banks simply have more resources, different infrastructure.

Everything is content like you say. It just depends what content we want and should expose.

Peace! Stay dry. T>

Tim Reha on January 19, 2010

Mike,

Guess what?

Your Blippy Data most likely has been HACKED by the Chinese Government.

http://www.whois.net/whois/blippy.com

Blippy is Hosted by:

http://www.slicehost.com/

Copyright 2009 Slicehost LLC Slicehost is a Rackspace company.

—-

RACKSPACE’s Comment on the Chinese Hack Attack:

http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=800

——

A MUST READ on “What is China” by Mark Anderson, Future in Review / StratNews.

http://www.tapsns.com/blog/index.php/2010/01/what-is-china/

——

Matt Whiting on January 19, 2010

As the 23rd comment, I guess it’s now a given this is an incredibly interesting concept. This seems like a great way for you to share thoughts on purchases with friends and members of the Blippy community. For companies to do something this automatic, however, if not done right, which likely would be the way it would be done, is just a way to create a lot of extra noise with limited value.

I see a lot of potential here but imagine companies will have a hard time determining what transparency or pseduo-transparency-based communications will provide any value to its customers.

Shaan on January 19, 2010

Funny–I started doing almost exactly what Blippy does on Twitter… had to give it up though since it’s a pain to access in China.

My purpose for doing it on Twitter was the thought that one thing Americans (and probably other Westerners) seem particularly sensitive about is letting other people know how much money they’re spending, which seems to make sense considering how bad we are in general at saving money. So if people started to share that info more, it would serve as a sort of public peer pressure to save better.

I added our combined salary and city of residence to the twitter bio, the idea being that if people ever followed our account, they could get an idea of how far that salary would get you in that particular city. The expenses would help by giving a rough idea of the cost of living, as well. Since the point of doing it wasn’t about who I am, I didn’t put my name on the account.

I didn’t want to share exactly what I was spending my money on either, so we left the descriptions pretty vague–food, clothes, games, etc. If we bought something that might be embarrassing to share, it just went under “shopping”.

Unfortunately since Twitter doesn’t index highly repetitive tweets, I’m pretty sure no one would have ever found our account. I guess Twitter isn’t really designed for sharing that kind of information. Since it doesn’t look like Blippy lets you post your own updates manually, however, I can’t use it, as most of my purchases are done in cash. I’ll keep my eye on it though.

Erik Bergman on January 21, 2010

Foleymo: You spend more bucks at convenience stores than my teenage daughter does! And she works next door to one. Thanks for getting personal in your post, although such sharing of spending info to me falls in the “none of your bleeping business” category.