The launch of Blippy raised a few questions recently. 1 – is there room for another realtime social network? 2 – Is this an indication of how comfortable or näive society is with registering their financial details with a new social media start up? But the underlying factor is ‘what’s in it for me?’At present, it looks like most posts are apps from iTunes but you are able to link it to sites such as Amazon. Do I really want the world to know that I may have bought a 50″ TV from Amazon?If you have a facebook profile, and lets face it, who doesn’t Do you post up your holiday pics or your status updates to say that you are going away?Before you know it, those ‘friends’ you have on facebook will know where you live, when you are away from the said address and what you own! You will be ripe for the picking.Now this may seem like an extreme version of events but the BBC’s Virtual Revolution recently stated that out of your few hundred facebook friends, you actually interact with less than 10! Suddenly the scenario seems that much more feasible.The fact remains though, what’s in it for me? Will online checkouts soon have the option for a discount if you offer them exposure by broadcasting your purchases to Blippy? If so, the consumer will have to weigh up the discount vs the cost of broadcasting this information.Perhaps though, in an age where identity fraud is rife, people are being a bit too blasè with the importance of thei information.I’m not saying that Blippy will fail, if it offers integration to fellow networks like Twitter and Buzz, then it will succeed. I am just stressing the importance of what information we should share.If I broadcast that ‘i like Nutella on my toast’, I don’t care if no one listens. If I broadcast that I’ve bought a new iMac, there may be repurcussions beyond belief.
