Blippy

{{Distinguish|Blippi}}{{Infobox company

| logo =

| name = Blippy

| type =

| foundation = December 2009

| key_people = Ashvin Kumar, Chris Estreich, and Philip J. Kaplan (Co founders)

| industry = Personal finance, Software

| location = Palo Alto, California

| products = Rich Internet application

| revenue = N/A

| num_employees =

| homepage = {{webarchive |url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100304220242/http://blippy.com/ |date=March 4, 2010 |title=blippy.com}}

}}

Blippy was a social media sharing site operated from Palo Alto, California by a company of the same name, for users to post and follow each other's updates about their purchases of goods and services. It was described as the "Twitter of personal finance",{{cite news|publisher=CNET|title=Blippy launches the Twitter of personal finance|author=Rafe Needleman|date=2009-12-14|url=http://m.news.com/2166-12_3-10415308-250.html|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100625025040/http://m.news.com/2166-12_3-10415308-250.html|archivedate=2010-06-25}} and was often compared with Twitter{{cite news|publisher=VentureBeat|url=https://venturebeat.com/2010/01/14/blippy/|title=Blippy, the Twitter for credit cards, gets funding from Twitter co-founder|date=2010-01-14|author=Anthony Ha|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://archive.today/20100116214632/http://deals.venturebeat.com/2010/01/14/blippy/|archivedate=2010-01-16}} because it was based on that company's open sharing model. One purpose of the site was to facilitate discussion and comparison shopping among people who are connected with each other online.{{cite news|publisher=Wall Street Journal|url=https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01/14/are-you-ready-to-tweet-credit-and-debit-card-purchases/|title=Are You Ready to Tweet Credit and Debit Card Purchases?|author=Mary Pilon |authorlink=Mary Pilon|date=2010-01-14}} As of July, 2010, the company primarily focused on social sharing of product and service reviews. The Blippy service was shut down as of May 2011.{{cite web|url=https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/19/the-end-of-blippy-as-we-know-it/|title=The End of Blippy As We Know It|publisher=TechCrunch|date=2011-05-19|last = Tsotsis|first = Alexia|authorlink = Alexia Tsotsis}}

History

Blippy was founded by Ashvin Kumar, Chris Estreich, and Philip J. Kaplan. Blippy launched on $1.6 million of financing from a number of prominent venture capital firms, including Charles River Ventures and Sequoia Capital, and angel investors Evan Williams, Jason Calacanis and James Hong.{{cite news|publisher=TechCrunch|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/23/AR2009122301803.html|title=Blippy Already Showing Off $1 Million Worth Of Your Credit Card Purchases|author=MG Siegler|date=2009-12-23}}

On April 23, 2010, social media guide Mashable revealed that Blippy had allowed Google to index detailed transaction information, thus resulting in four users' full credit card numbers being exposed to the public.{{cite news|publisher=Mashable|url=http://mashable.com/2010/04/23/blippy-credit-card-numbers/|title=Blippy Users’ Credit Card Numbers Exposed in Google Search Results|author=Jennifer Van Grove|date=2010-04-23}} A blog post from the official Blippy blog claimed the incident was "a lot less bad than it looks" and apologized for their mistake of putting credit card information in a hidden div tag during the beta test period of the website.{{Cite web|title = Announce A Data Breach And Say It's No Big Deal?|url = https://www.cbsnews.com/news/announce-a-data-breach-and-say-its-no-big-deal/|website = www.cbsnews.com|access-date = 2015-05-05}}{{Cite web|title = Good night, Posterous|url = http://blippy.posterous.com/blippy-and-credit-card-numbers|website = blippy.posterous.com|accessdate = 2015-05-05}} This extended information was indexed by Google and was viewable in Google cache.{{cite news|publisher=Official Blippy Blog|url=http://blog.blippy.com/2010/04/23/blippy-and-credit-card-numbers|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100429162348/http://blog.blippy.com/2010/04/23/blippy-and-credit-card-numbers/|url-status=dead|archive-date=2010-04-29|title=Blippy And Credit Card Numbers|author=Philip Kaplan|date=2010-04-23}}

A May 2011 TechCrunch article discussed the decline of the service as it struggled to find relevance among consumers. According to then-CEO Ashvin Kumar, the service was unable to significantly increase user engagement, indicating that Blippy, at the time, had only 100,000 registered users and, of those, only 30% had shared a purchase. Kumar indicated that the Blippy staff was considering moving in a different direction in the social commerce category away from the current Blippy product. The service was shut down shortly thereafter.

References

Category:Companies based in San Francisco

Category:Defunct social networking services

Category:Internet properties established in 2009