
The End Of Blippy As We Know It - jemeshsu
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/19/the-end-of-blippy-as-we-know-it/
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Alex3917
"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.

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SoftwareMaven
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
What pain did Twitter address?

I can come up with broad, hand-wavy justifications. But those justifications
apply just as well to Blippy.

~~~
whiskers
It allowed people to update their social status pretty much from anywhere at
any time with minimum friction.

~~~
smanek
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"

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danielharan
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
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
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).

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

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bugsy
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
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>

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rdl
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.

~~~
jsavimbi
> 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
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
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
Oh, actually he was working with the Little Grey Guy guy. He did not actually
own a cute gr[e|a]y cat.

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Vekz
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.

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wyclif
Blippy in the FC deadpool = irony.

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hardik988
'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?

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adrianwaj
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.

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citizenkeys
"And I Feel Fine..."

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phlux
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
"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.

