6 ms·

The End Of Blippy As We Know It

59 points by jemeshsu 15y ago

rdl 15y ago
Wow, there have been a lot of "blippy is dead" "no we're not" postings and messages over the past few months. I think merely sharing purchases is a non-starter, but aggregating data from consumers, blinding it, and helping people make decisions (the way creditkarma does for a single variable of credit score and a limited number of levers, and the way mint, etc. should do, but don't) is what Blippy should have done.
- happybuy 15y ago
  Yes, we thought about adding some social layer (purchase sharing etc.) to our e-commerce site http://www.happybuy.com/ http://www.happybuy.com/ but have always been skeptical of the notion that people want to share purchases. We've focused on trying to help people get the best prices on their purchases (currently through price tracking and alerting) and potentially users would be more willing to share bargains/good buys as finding bargains may be something that a certain type of user would want to share, inform or brag about to friends. However as Blippy has shown I think the model of simply sharing your purchases without a reason for that sharing does not provide any particular user value.
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  > What we failed to ask was, “Who cares?” truth be told, nobody really wants to share that level of information nor be responsible for the purchases made by others in their social graph based on their recommendation. Or better yet, it could've worked, to an extent, if an amateur wasn't the driving force behind it. That being said, I have to congratulate Pud in convincing someone to plunk $13M down on his idea, vagina-selling t-shirts aside.
  - bugsy 15y ago
    Oh, it was the Pud FC dude behind this, the dude who did all the porn videos staring himself where he paid the actresses, and then stuck it on his website. Huh, interesting, I didn't know that guy was still around doing stuff.
    - rdl 15y ago
      I think you mean "owned a really cute gray cat and was able to get a lot of models to pose semi-naked and only wearing his brand t-shirts while holding the cat". Maybe there was real porn too. He also did AdBrite and a few other things; pud is pretty damn prolific, and a smart/nice guy (I've seen him speak at Founder Institute and other startup events). The other people involved in blippy are earlier in their careers but also pretty involved in online forums, clueful, etc.
      - rdl 15y ago
        Oh, actually he was working with the Little Grey Guy guy. He did not actually own a cute gr[e|a]y cat.
deleted 15y ago
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SoftwareMaven 15y ago
Most important line in the article, IMO: "But hopefully he’s taken to heart the real reason Blippy didn’t work: Sharing purchases with friends doesn’t solve a problem." If you don't solve a real problem people have, you will fail. People may not know they have the problem, but they must have it. If you can't articulate the pain, it's time to pivot.
- smanek 15y ago
  What pain did Twitter address? I can come up with broad, hand-wavy justifications. But those justifications apply just as well to Blippy.
  - whiskers 15y ago
    It allowed people to update their social status pretty much from anywhere at any time with minimum friction.
    - smanek 15y ago
      I'm not convinced that is more of a pain point than: "It allowed people to share their recent purchases pretty much from anywhere at any time with minimum friction"
  - derefr 15y ago
    As far as I can tell, Twitter was built on the idea that (some) people want to get advertised to by the brands (corporate or personal) they admire. Until Twitter came along, the "best" way to do this was basically through giving over your email address and waiting who-knows-how-long for a who-knows-how-lengthy newsletter, and hoping they don't sell your contact information to spammers in the meantime. Twitter enforces brevity, which encourages timely little facts rather than big, polished PR-jobs, and it's a pull-based, rather than push-based model, meaning that you can always unsubscribe from anyone whose channel becomes more noisy than signally. Twitter boomed primarily because its target early-adopters were precisely the kind of people who already had lots of followers to advertise to (celebrities, reporters/bloggers, "personalities", etc.), and who wanted a more streamlined, more informal, lower-expectation medium to push out their little updates. Twitter was such a channel, but although they were on it, their users weren't—so, since they were all of the getting-the-word-out bent, the next thing they all (simultaneously) got the word out about was Twitter itself. If not for this clever bit of social engineering, Twitter would never have become the "thing that comes after Facebook in 90% of sentences about social media."
Alex3917 15y ago
"The real reason Blippy didn’t work: Sharing purchases with friends doesn’t solve a problem." That, and it kind of makes you look like an asshole. The original idea never made any sense, and then they never fully committed when they decided to pivot. (The new version was much better, but they never built out the features that would have been needed to make it go viral.) I do think there are other markets they could go after by repurposing the technology platform they've already created. For example, I could easily see the technology being used by an MLM company as a social network for their salespeople or something. And it seems like they have a quality team, so I think there is still potential for the company despite the dubious first idea.
deleted 15y ago
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Vekz 15y ago
I spent some time as a contractor working for a "Social/E-commerce" startup. They were heavily customer development driven and found out early on that chasing after Blippy, and similarly Swipe.ly (who was doing the same thing at the time but looks pivoted now) would be a waste. They found this because everyone (potentiel customers) they talked to showed no signs of interest in the idea at all.
phlux 15y ago
I am no psychic, but seriously - when this came out I knew, I said to myself "this is retarded, this is going to fail -- too many people are actually afraid to let people know what they spend money on - how much they have." I am not surprised at all - and honestly, I think that a service like this adds absolutely nothing to the world. What value would this add? Clearly - nothing.
- bugsy 15y ago
  "afraid to let people know what they spend money on" I doubt it is about fear for most. How about it's none of the other people's business. This meme about how people are "fearful" of whatever corporate agenda has been decreed is kind of annoying actually.
justin_vanw 15y ago
"Looking through your friends credit card bills is really, really creepy, but what if we put it ONLINE."
wyclif 15y ago
Blippy in the FC deadpool = irony.
citizenkeys 15y ago
"And I Feel Fine..."
bugsy 15y ago
I never even heard of this thing and I keep up with stuff to a certain extent. Definitely not anything I would want to use, the idea of broadcasting all my credit card purchases to a subscription list seems like a really bad idea that no one would want to do.
- 18pfsmt 15y ago
  It seems as though they have gotten lots of coverage[1], and it is perplexing to read someone claim that they follow startups, yet not have heard of Blippy. Check out their Angel investor list, about 10 posts on TC, and it boggles the mind you would claim to be "keeping up with this stuff." [1]http://www.crunchbase.com/company/blippy http://www.crunchbase.com/company/blippy
adrianwaj 15y ago
I haven't read the article, but they should adapt it to Bitcoin. Showing where people are buying stuff, and what they are buying: de-anonymousing Bitcoin. Tax departments would like it to see what's going on, and it could help legitimize Bitcoin. People can see what bitcoin shops are hot, and trust-worthy. It should run as a node, and merchants can register their address so it knows what to look for. I guess the issue is faked buyers, so you'd allow users to put a widget on their site that shows their bitcoin address as registered with the site for that url. Basically, a trust and identity system tied in with the block chain. Pretty straight forward and useful, then providing something like the Verisign logo for sellers. Big startup potential.
hardik988 15y ago
'What we failed to ask was, “Who cares?”' I think that's the first thing I asked myself when I heard about Blippy. Is it their over-enthusiasm towards funded startups that blinded them, or just shortsightedness?
danielharan 15y ago
Wow. Spectacularly wrong conclusions. 1 - "The service never had a clear business model, just an attitude of “get user adoption and we’ll figure it out later.”" #%^&*! A site where people post their purchases. Does anyone really believe it would be hard to "monetize" that? If so, you're not cut out to be CEO. 2 - No one wants to share their purchases? Really? Tell that to the women that post youtube videos of the stuff they bought. Or tutorials explaining what make up to buy and how to apply it to look like celebrity X. Buyosphere is making that easier. I didn't see a trend to people posting their credit card statements online. Making that easier is absurd.
- revorad 15y ago
  I suspect the real reason is one which is all too common for startups' failure, but is hardly ever mentioned: the founders got bored. I guess it's easier to cite problems with the business model and traction, than to say this is not as exciting as we thought it would be, so we want to do something else.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    I'd like to see real evidence of that. Every entrepreneur I've met treated the business like a child. I've never seen one walk away bored (too be clear, I'm talking in anecdotes, which may be wrong, but you'll have to convince me with real evidence).
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

59 points by jemeshsu 15y ago

rdl 15y ago

Wow, there have been a lot of "blippy is dead" "no we're not" postings and messages over the past few months. I think merely sharing purchases is a non-starter, but aggregating data from consumers, blinding it, and helping people make decisions (the way creditkarma does for a single variable of credit score and a limited number of levers, and the way mint, etc. should do, but don't) is what Blippy should have done.

happybuy 15y ago
Yes, we thought about adding some social layer (purchase sharing etc.) to our e-commerce site http://www.happybuy.com/ http://www.happybuy.com/ but have always been skeptical of the notion that people want to share purchases. We've focused on trying to help people get the best prices on their purchases (currently through price tracking and alerting) and potentially users would be more willing to share bargains/good buys as finding bargains may be something that a certain type of user would want to share, inform or brag about to friends. However as Blippy has shown I think the model of simply sharing your purchases without a reason for that sharing does not provide any particular user value.
jsavimbi 15y ago
> What we failed to ask was, “Who cares?” truth be told, nobody really wants to share that level of information nor be responsible for the purchases made by others in their social graph based on their recommendation. Or better yet, it could've worked, to an extent, if an amateur wasn't the driving force behind it. That being said, I have to congratulate Pud in convincing someone to plunk $13M down on his idea, vagina-selling t-shirts aside.
- bugsy 15y ago
  Oh, it was the Pud FC dude behind this, the dude who did all the porn videos staring himself where he paid the actresses, and then stuck it on his website. Huh, interesting, I didn't know that guy was still around doing stuff.
  - rdl 15y ago
    I think you mean "owned a really cute gray cat and was able to get a lot of models to pose semi-naked and only wearing his brand t-shirts while holding the cat". Maybe there was real porn too. He also did AdBrite and a few other things; pud is pretty damn prolific, and a smart/nice guy (I've seen him speak at Founder Institute and other startup events). The other people involved in blippy are earlier in their careers but also pretty involved in online forums, clueful, etc.
    - rdl 15y ago
      Oh, actually he was working with the Little Grey Guy guy. He did not actually own a cute gr[e|a]y cat.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

Most important line in the article, IMO: "But hopefully he’s taken to heart the real reason Blippy didn’t work: Sharing purchases with friends doesn’t solve a problem." If you don't solve a real problem people have, you will fail. People may not know they have the problem, but they must have it. If you can't articulate the pain, it's time to pivot.

smanek 15y ago
What pain did Twitter address? I can come up with broad, hand-wavy justifications. But those justifications apply just as well to Blippy.
- whiskers 15y ago
  It allowed people to update their social status pretty much from anywhere at any time with minimum friction.
  - smanek 15y ago
    I'm not convinced that is more of a pain point than: "It allowed people to share their recent purchases pretty much from anywhere at any time with minimum friction"
- derefr 15y ago
  As far as I can tell, Twitter was built on the idea that (some) people want to get advertised to by the brands (corporate or personal) they admire. Until Twitter came along, the "best" way to do this was basically through giving over your email address and waiting who-knows-how-long for a who-knows-how-lengthy newsletter, and hoping they don't sell your contact information to spammers in the meantime. Twitter enforces brevity, which encourages timely little facts rather than big, polished PR-jobs, and it's a pull-based, rather than push-based model, meaning that you can always unsubscribe from anyone whose channel becomes more noisy than signally. Twitter boomed primarily because its target early-adopters were precisely the kind of people who already had lots of followers to advertise to (celebrities, reporters/bloggers, "personalities", etc.), and who wanted a more streamlined, more informal, lower-expectation medium to push out their little updates. Twitter was such a channel, but although they were on it, their users weren't—so, since they were all of the getting-the-word-out bent, the next thing they all (simultaneously) got the word out about was Twitter itself. If not for this clever bit of social engineering, Twitter would never have become the "thing that comes after Facebook in 90% of sentences about social media."

Alex3917 15y ago

"The real reason Blippy didn’t work: Sharing purchases with friends doesn’t solve a problem." That, and it kind of makes you look like an asshole. The original idea never made any sense, and then they never fully committed when they decided to pivot. (The new version was much better, but they never built out the features that would have been needed to make it go viral.) I do think there are other markets they could go after by repurposing the technology platform they've already created. For example, I could easily see the technology being used by an MLM company as a social network for their salespeople or something. And it seems like they have a quality team, so I think there is still potential for the company despite the dubious first idea.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Vekz 15y ago

I spent some time as a contractor working for a "Social/E-commerce" startup. They were heavily customer development driven and found out early on that chasing after Blippy, and similarly Swipe.ly (who was doing the same thing at the time but looks pivoted now) would be a waste. They found this because everyone (potentiel customers) they talked to showed no signs of interest in the idea at all.

phlux 15y ago

I am no psychic, but seriously - when this came out I knew, I said to myself "this is retarded, this is going to fail -- too many people are actually afraid to let people know what they spend money on - how much they have." I am not surprised at all - and honestly, I think that a service like this adds absolutely nothing to the world. What value would this add? Clearly - nothing.

bugsy 15y ago
"afraid to let people know what they spend money on" I doubt it is about fear for most. How about it's none of the other people's business. This meme about how people are "fearful" of whatever corporate agenda has been decreed is kind of annoying actually.

justin_vanw 15y ago

"Looking through your friends credit card bills is really, really creepy, but what if we put it ONLINE."

wyclif 15y ago

Blippy in the FC deadpool = irony.

citizenkeys 15y ago

"And I Feel Fine..."

bugsy 15y ago

I never even heard of this thing and I keep up with stuff to a certain extent. Definitely not anything I would want to use, the idea of broadcasting all my credit card purchases to a subscription list seems like a really bad idea that no one would want to do.

18pfsmt 15y ago
It seems as though they have gotten lots of coverage[1], and it is perplexing to read someone claim that they follow startups, yet not have heard of Blippy. Check out their Angel investor list, about 10 posts on TC, and it boggles the mind you would claim to be "keeping up with this stuff." [1]http://www.crunchbase.com/company/blippy http://www.crunchbase.com/company/blippy

adrianwaj 15y ago

I haven't read the article, but they should adapt it to Bitcoin. Showing where people are buying stuff, and what they are buying: de-anonymousing Bitcoin. Tax departments would like it to see what's going on, and it could help legitimize Bitcoin. People can see what bitcoin shops are hot, and trust-worthy. It should run as a node, and merchants can register their address so it knows what to look for. I guess the issue is faked buyers, so you'd allow users to put a widget on their site that shows their bitcoin address as registered with the site for that url. Basically, a trust and identity system tied in with the block chain. Pretty straight forward and useful, then providing something like the Verisign logo for sellers. Big startup potential.

hardik988 15y ago

'What we failed to ask was, “Who cares?”' I think that's the first thing I asked myself when I heard about Blippy. Is it their over-enthusiasm towards funded startups that blinded them, or just shortsightedness?

danielharan 15y ago

Wow. Spectacularly wrong conclusions. 1 - "The service never had a clear business model, just an attitude of “get user adoption and we’ll figure it out later.”" #%^&*! A site where people post their purchases. Does anyone really believe it would be hard to "monetize" that? If so, you're not cut out to be CEO. 2 - No one wants to share their purchases? Really? Tell that to the women that post youtube videos of the stuff they bought. Or tutorials explaining what make up to buy and how to apply it to look like celebrity X. Buyosphere is making that easier. I didn't see a trend to people posting their credit card statements online. Making that easier is absurd.

revorad 15y ago
I suspect the real reason is one which is all too common for startups' failure, but is hardly ever mentioned: the founders got bored. I guess it's easier to cite problems with the business model and traction, than to say this is not as exciting as we thought it would be, so we want to do something else.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  I'd like to see real evidence of that. Every entrepreneur I've met treated the business like a child. I've never seen one walk away bored (too be clear, I'm talking in anecdotes, which may be wrong, but you'll have to convince me with real evidence).

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]