Are You Ready To Share Your Spending Habits, Twitter-style?
First there was Blippy, now there is Swipely. What otherwise sounds like names for cute, furry creatures are actually sophisticated social shopping websites that allows users to share their online shopping habits with their online community. Joining the social ranks of Twitter and Facebook, Blippy and Swipely aren’t just about sharing every little mundane purchase. Both websites are premised on the engagement and value of what you bought, where you bought it, and what you thought about it…and the bigger idea that other people will be interested too.
Blippy and Swipely connect your wallet to the internet by linking your credit and debit cards to your online profile; once you join, your online purchases will stream to a news feed on users’ homepage along with other people’s purchase updates. Your latest purchase will show up on Blippy or Swipely for other people to comment on. It functions like Twitter’s constant stream of users’ personal status update, but instead of a 140 character limit, your credit card speaks for itself.
Both websites emphasize the power of sharing consumer information: what one recommends or doesn’t recommend, questions about purchases, and conversations around shopping—all at a fast pace and in real-time. Consumers themselves can generate real, organic conversations about services and products (and also be the ultimate data mining source for companies, a dream come true in cost-free marketing, or a nightmare in negative customer feedback).
While we’ve reviewed Blippy before, Swipely is the new kid on the scene. Swipely upgrades the purchase-sharing option beyond Blippy’s standard “how much was spent where” format (for example, ‘CreditKarma spent $250 at Amazon’) to include online access to over 250,000 retailers and restaurants so users can get specific about what they bought. Also, Swipely does not automatically include how much you spent; the idea is to focus on the story behind the purchase, such as what you bought and where. Finally, users can also rate purchases on a scale, which could lead to a database of user experiences and ratings the likes of Yelp.
But, will all of this catch on? Will people be as eager to share their online shopping habits on Blippy and Swipely as much as they share their everyday activities on Twitter? Can credit card transactions really be social and lead to conversations? Blippy and Swipely are trying to change the culture of how we think about our spending; that personal finance is something to we can share and, in a way, helps us monitor our own consumer habits as well as eavesdrop on others.
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