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I don't mean this to sound snarky but I'm having a hard time understanding the basic utility of blippys service. Why would you want to automatically share info
by brown9-2 17y ago
I don't mean this to sound snarky but I'm having a hard time understanding the basic utility of blippys service.
Why would you want to automatically share information about every purchase you make with your credit/debit card with the world? It just sounds like a recipe for disaster with very little upside.
Can anyone who uses this service (if any HN members do) explain the usefulness of it to me? I might just be misunderstanding the purpose.
- johnrob 17y agoI don't use the service, but I see it as a blog like tool. If you have one, you only use it in scenarios you'd like to tell everyone about. If you're at a baseball game, you use it to buy beers and they automatically post something like "John Doe bought 4 beers at the Giants game".
- leftnode 17y agoI was wondering the same thing, it just seems like a service where they'll be able to sell your data to companies down the road, or advertise you stuff you might be interested in. Even if this turns out to be test data, it's still pretty shocking and will tarnish the service forever.
- fnid2 17y agoIt's definitely an example of what can happen to your financial info if a website you give it to makes a mistake or gets greedy. It's why I'd never use a service like that or mint, et al...
- smokinn 17y agoIt's only for the most exhibitionist type of people. Think of sci-fi books with people being "life actors" or some such where people can tune in to them 24/7 and see what they're doing. It's basically just a stepping stone to that. I don't see this ever becoming even close to mainstream.
- bsergean 17y agoThis reminds me of a scanner darkly where the hero spy himself.
- melito 17y agoI'd assume the inspiration for the service is grounded on the idea that your social circle influences things that you buy. If you buy something and then a number of your 'followers' buy the same item a few days afterwards, that information is very valuable.
- mattmaroon 17y agoThe problem is it's not really valuable to you or your friends. It's valuable to people who want to sell you crap.
- melito 17y agoIf I could put a dollar amount on my internet reputation that would be very valuable to me. I reckon that's something I could put to good use.
- mattmaroon 17y agoThis does the reverse. It doesn't put a dollar amount on your internet reputation. It develops an internet reputation based on your dollar amounts. Then they will monetize by giving it to the only people who really care how much you spend at Starbucks: Starbucks (and competitors).
- sethg 17y agoYet, strangely, the people who want to sell me crap never let me cash in directly on my personal information. They always want to buy through some middleman that claims to be offering me some other service.
- rmorrison 17y agoI don't mean this to sound snarky but I'm having a hard time understanding the basic utility of blippys service. It's the easiest way to share your credit card information with the world.
- mattmaroon 17y agoI was just thinking on the way into work this morning that not enough people have my Discover Card number.
- jaybol 17y ago1) Get your discover card number as a tattoo (make sure to include your name as it appears on the card, expiration and 3 digit code from the back). 2) Submit photo to hacker news
- dhimes 17y ago(OT/X-Post Just getting to this now:) Silly, everybody knows you don't have a Discover card, because you're on Facebook, where all of us friends know this about you....
- blitzo 17y agoi hope you mean it in sarcasm way... btw i cant believe nobody point a finger on google yet, this part of their fault too. there should a 'proper' mechanism on their webmaster tool an option to excluded a sensitive data Or make it an opt-out features Or add one regex line to detect an anomaly data on their search. ffs they have billions to tinker around with it
- nitrogen 17y agoGoogle shouldn't bear responsibility for indexing something sensitive, as the sensitive information should not be reachable via any link anywhere, let alone on the public Internet. It's about as sane as expecting the government to clean up after one's own mistakes, and just as damaging to the concept of personal or corporate responsibility.
- 17y ago
- bgnm2000 17y agoI use it - not the credit card part - and its fun. I don't check it often, but every now and then. I guess the appeal is that its unique, new, and has potential.
- brown9-2 17y agopotential for what though?
- die_sekte 17y agoFor sharing lots of private data comfortably with the rest of the world. ;) On a more serious note, I think Blippy's main use is efficient bragging.
- malloreon 17y agoForgive my naivete, but how do you use it without using the credit card part?
- billclerico 17y agoyou can share purchase history from online merchants without connecting your credit card - like amazon, itunes, zappos etc
- axod 17y agoIt makes about as much sense as twitter does.
- Gormo 17y agoYup. I'm just amazed that these companies keep finding capital. Didn't we learn anything from the dotcom bubble?
- mwerty 17y agoI think what we learned was that its really hard to tell 'which' crazy idea will make it. Even google was dismissed as a feature, not a company.
- mattmaroon 17y agoI don't think that's entirely fair. Twitter has some purposes other than sheer vanity. Sharing links, 1 to many communication, etc. Don't get me wrong, I don't care for Twitter myself. I don't use it, and I do find most of it to be trite and little more than navel gazing. But I can see some useful signal on Twitter, I just cannot see how it could not get buried under an avalanche of noise. Blippy seems totally vacuous.
- axod 17y agoSharing details of things you've purchased is immediately monetizable. If they can get users using it, it's trivial to make it insanely profitable. I can see it catching on with kids definitely.
- Gormo 17y agoI can definitely see the value from a sales/marketing perspective, but the trick is getting people using this. They're going to have a pretty big challenge consistently delivering value to their users and not becoming at best an ephemeral fad.
- 17y ago
- angelhaze218 17y agoIt could also be financial therapy for the serious shopaholic, to have all spendings be public for critique among friends and family... much like calorie counting/blogging for those on diet