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Looking back on what became a tough end to a tough year for the retail sector, the one bright spot was the online sector. Shoppers whipped out their plastic at a record rate on Black Friday, a trend that continued throughout the season.
The Amazon (AMZN) Kindle killed the competition, reinforcing the status of the online channel as the future of the retail business. Social media, in particular, had its first real test this year, as many companies -- including Best Buy (BBY), JCPenney (JCP) and Target (TGT) -- used the likes of Twitter and Facebook to engage customers, publicize sales and generally increase revenue. The next stage in the evolution, of course, is to use shopping behavior to trigger viral results.
Blippy seems to be betting on the potential of automated shopping updates as a revenue driver. The company, which is often called "Twitter for your credit card," has convinced a few other people that it has a winning idea. Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures (which incubated Blippy) and a who's who of Web 2.0 personalities to pony up $1.6 million in seed funding. Mahalo founder Jason Calcanis, Hot or Not co-founder James Hong and Textmarks CEO Ariel Poler are among the investors, as well as Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams. According to co-founder Philip Kaplan -- famous for bringing us the blog Fucked Company and ad network AdBrite -- said it wasn't hard to get some of these guys on board, since they're already avid Blippy users.
The company is built on the principle that there's a lot of data from your credit card that can be used socially. As you make purchases, the people connected with you can get a sense of where you're shopping. Put enough of these people together, and you can see trends start to emerge.
Blippy kicked off its private testing phase in December, with 5,000 participants sharing their information about approximately $5 million in purchases. The bugs have been worked out, the founders believe, so they have opened Blippy up to the public.
As usual, the real advantage here is for product and retail marketers. If enough participation is attracted, the intelligence that could be mined from Blippy is substantial, making many major retailers more effective in an increasingly competitive market. Social media has effectively become social marketing already, and Blippy shamelessly moves forward with that trend. And, why not? Without social marketing, there's no way to keep social media free and running.
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