Earlier this summer we wrote a post on purchase sharing site Blippy’s decline, titled “The End Of Blippy As We Know It.” While Blippy CEO Ashvin Kumar didn’t want to reveal what the team’s next step was at the time, we’ve now got a few more details to share as to what the company’s pivot new venture will be – Heartsy.me, a daily deals site for handmade goods and other products.
Heartsy.me has been around in incognito mode since February 2011 and has gotten considerable media pick up as a “Groupon for Etsy” mainly because of its novel twist on the concept of a social deals platform, letting users vote on what deals they want to see. Even we covered it, without knowing anything about the team behind it. → Read More
Let’s be honest: One of the reasons David Hornik actually agreed to be on camera at All Things D is that he didn’t have a startup about to file to go public any second. So we talked about some of his more high profile investments that haven’t always lived up to the hype.
Hornik explains why reports of Blippy’s death have been greatly exaggerated, and why he says the investment still wasn’t a mistake. What’s more he dishes (sort of) of the nine-figure annual revenues of another portfolio company Say Media– the love child of VideoEgg and SixApart. And he tells us about an enterprise software company that’s a budding sleeper hit.
More broadly, he argues the immediate-hit-or-it’s-a-failure misses the point of venture investing. (A philosophy Reid Hoffman might agree with after a decade-long slog at LinkedIn.) → Read More
If you haven’t heard, Lady Gaga is taking over the internets with marketing and branding deals to spread the word on her new album, “Born This Way.” The pop artist just launched a new deal with Zynga for Gagaville; and today Lady Gaga is debuting a partnership with flash sales giant Gilt Groupe; offering Gaga-inspired merchandise, curates sales, access to Gaga events and more. And to help spread these deals across the web, Gilt has enlisted Stipple, a technology that allows you to tag people in images no matter where they reside on the web.
In simple terms, Stipple allows publishers to tag a person in a photo on the web, enter contextual information such as a Twitter name or Facebook name and then anyone can see their most recent social updates as overlays on that picture. But Stipple also partners with e-commerce sites to provide a way for each photo to show exactly what piece of clothing the person in the photo is wearing — to show you who makes it, how much it costs, and where to buy it. And it allows you to “Want” it (save it to look at later) or “Shop” for it via two overlay buttons right on the picture itself. → Read More
So it turns out that almost nobody wants people to check out their purchases. And also that just adding a social element to a feature isn’t enough to make it useful. The lessons of user adoption are sometimes learned the hard way.
Thus is the story of the failure of Blippy, a product that launched in private beta in December of 2009 and that we breathlessly fawned over again, and again, and again and again (and again and again …). → Read More
It was back in July of last year that we first wrote about a service called Voyurl with the headline: It’s Hard To Tell If Voyurl Or Their Ads Are Creepier. You see, at the time, the still-in-stealth startup was targeting angel investors via Google ads get their attention to hopefully talk about their product. That’s actually pretty smart. So we had to give the edge to the product itself being creepier. You see, its aim was to be a service that made your entire browsing history public.
At the time, we said the best way to think of this was as a sort of “Blippy but with more potential porn”. Of course, Blippy has since been tweaking its service to be less about public sharing of your purchases and more about the social dynamics of purchases and recommendations. But fear not, Voyurl is gladly picking up the creepy mantle! → Read More
If you haven’t tried out Blippy since the company rather infamously launched last year as the social network for sharing credit card purchases, you should go back and give it another look. Things are quite a bit different now. And a new partnership showcases that.
Blippy has partnered with Sephora to create a version of Blippy specifically tailored to the fragrance and beauty retailer’s brand. From here, Sephora shoppers can easily share purchases, see what others are buying, and talk about all this stuff. While you can still see some purchase prices, it’s less about that, and more about the social aspect of the shopping experience. For example, a user saw someone bought some DiorShow Mascara and asked, “Is it worth the higher price tag (as compared to a $5 mascara)?” A few minutes later, they got an answer (yes). → Read More
Users on Blippy, the controversial service which lets you share purchases and purchase prices with your friends, are sharing $500,000 in purchases per day, according a Tweet posted by co-founder Philip Kaplan.
To put this in perspective, users were collectively sharing more than $1.5 million worth of purchases every week in May (or $214,000 per day). Back in December, Blippy was showing $1 million in purchases total, so the service is definitely growing. Kaplan also says that users are posting more than 1,000 reviews on the site per day. → Read More
Over the weekend Philip Kaplan, co-founder of social purchasing site Blippy tweeted out a link to Steve Jobs demoing iTunes Ping, with the added sly comment “Looks like Blippy.” Curious about what Jobs’ movement into the social sharing space means for Blippy, we brought Kaplan into the TCTV studio and grilled him on what exactly Jobs did or did not copy, how often iTunes purchases were shared on Blippy, and whether or not the concept of social shopping has hit mainstream. → Read More
Earlier this month, we pointed out that social shopping site Blippy had pretty much the best 404 page ever. It was a double rainbow all the way. Tonight, Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan felt like he had some deja vu. Check out Ben & Jerry’s homepage.
Now, do we really think a giant national ice cream chain is copying a small startup’s 404 page? I don’t know. But between the grass, the sky, and, well, the rainbows, they are pretty similar. → Read More
Creating 404 pages (the error page you get when a page on a site cannot be located) has become something of an artform. Startups can earn major bonus points in the geek community for having a humorous one. And Blippy has just tapped a perfect meme for their’s.
As you can see here, Blippy’s 404 page features a glorious rainbow. And while it’s not exactly a double rainbow, the cute unicorn child creature seems to think it may be. “What does it mean…,” he wonders. → Read More
A few weeks ago, we were alerted to a new site currently in stealth mode called Voyurl. As the name implies, the idea behind it is to make it so you can see what other people are looking at on the web (and to make your clickstream seen). It sounds creepy as hell. It’s like Blippy but with more potential porn. I love it.
But when I tried to sign up for the service, they sent me a note back that it wasn’t quite ready yet and that they were cranking on the beta. Fine, that happens from time to time. I can be patient. But I’m not sure I can quietly wait any longer when the site starts running ads like this. → Read More
WeShop is hoping to shake up the online shopping space with its platform that allows consumers to share purchase information on a free and anonymous basis.
In private beta, WeShop allows consumers to pool their purchasing information which is available to other WeShop members. WeShop then analyzes and sells this data for vendors. Here’s the catch-consumers have to give WeShop access to your e-mail account or your credit card number. That way, when you use your credit card for a purchase or if you buy something online and receive an email receipt, WeShop will flag it and insert it into your profile → Read More
When Blippy was looking for a little help creating an overview video for their service, I recommended that they take a look at Mountain View based Transvideo Studios. I know executive producer Rico Andrade there fairly well and have seen some of the work they’ve done for Gmail (another), Box.net, Facebook, Mint.com (very dramatic) and others. It’s high quality stuff, and can be aimed at users, partners, advertisers, etc. depending on what audience you want.
We’ve ranted before about the power of a good demo video to tell a story. Cash strapped startups can simply do one themselves with screen capture software and iMovie, or whatever. Or you can spend a few thousand dollars and get something professionally done. Either way it’s just a good way to communicate what your startup does.
Blippy video below: → Read More
Audioo bills itself as the “Blippy for Voicemail”. As you’re probably aware, Blippy lets users share information that’s considered to be really private by most people (credit card transactions) with others – and sometimes, much more than just transactions.
Audioo basically lets you do the same thing, but with voice mails. → Read More
Today, a new service named Swipely launched with $8.5 million in funding to make everyday purchases more social. This, of course, is a direct competitor to Blippy, the controversial service which lets you share purchases (and purchase prices). This afternoon, Blippy is swiping back at Swipely with the launch of its API.
Co-founder Philip Kaplan has just announced the feature today at the Finovate conference in San Francisco. With the API, third-party developers will be able to create their own applications using Blippy’s data. Now, before everyone gets all up in arms about this given Blippy’s recent privacy issue, the company is promising that privacy will be a key part of the API. This includes mandatory OAuth to ensure that developers only have access to Blippy data that users choose to share. Further, only approved developers will be given access to the API. Those that wish to get access, can apply here. → Read More
While it’s easy to rag on Blippy for their controversial model (making credit card transactions social), and their security slip-ups (making credit card numbers social), it’s hard to deny that there is something compelling behind the idea. If there weren’t, no one would use the service. Enter Swipely, a service that also aims to make your purchases more social. But rather than focus on the money, they focus on the transactions themselves.
When Microsoft bought TellMe in 2007, co-founder Angus Davis was probably set for life. After all, that deal was rumored to be in the $800 million to $1 billion range. But Davis left Microsoft in May of last year because he was getting the entrepreneurial itch again. By the Summer, he had his plan to create Swipely. And by the Fall, he had many of his former TellMe colleagues with him, and about a million dollars in angel funding. Now his project is ready to be unveiled, and they’ve taken a new $7.5 million Series A round to make sure it succeeds. → Read More
The best way to describe Offermatic is this – imagine if Mint, Blippy and Groupon went off to Vegas for the weekend, got wasted and ended up in bed together. Nine months later, out pops Offermatic.
Like Mint, Offermatic is a front end user interface to Yodlee’s robust financial network. And the service digs through your credit card transactions just like Blippy does (although they aren’t posted for the world to see). And like Groupon, Offermatic is pushing special offers to users. → Read More
Earlier today, testers of the new mobile payment service, Square, got a scare.
Emails were sent out suggesting that users had changed their bank account information, and Square was emailing to let them know that the new account was verified. The only problem? These users didn’t actually change a thing. Obviously, this caused some concern, as did the note at the bottom of the email, “If you have not requested this change, please contact support@squareup.com.” After Square started receiving emails wondering what was going on, they sent out a second email letting users know that nothing was wrong, they were just tweaking the backend of the system, and forgot to turn off email notifications for current testers. “Your bank account has not been affected. Square, and your data, have not be compromised in any way,” the email read.
I spoke to co-founder Jack Dorsey tonight about the mix-up, and he assures me that this was in no way a breach of security. Obviously, people are on high-alert for these types of things given the news last week that some credit card information ended up on Google compliments of the startup Blippy. But today’s Square incident was just a poorly-timed email, nothing more. → Read More
As I mentioned in Sunday’s post, Blippy’s founders were hammering out a new security plan to assure users that all their information, especially their credit card numbers, would be safe. They delivered this morning, in their latest blog post, issuing new details about the blunder, how it worked with Google, and the framework for a go-forward plan. In addition, Blippy sounded more contrite about the situation. On Friday their post said, “it’s a lot less bad than it looks,” this Monday the tone is less defensive and more apologetic “However, this is a very serious issue and simply apologizing is not enough. We’ve spent the last 48 hours working around the clock to dissect the issues, reach out to affected users, and put together a plan to ensure this never happens again.” New details on their security plan ahead. → Read More
Imagine combining your best and worst week ever into one— welcome to Blippy’s world. This week the site closed a new $11.2 million funding round, got its first picture in the New York Times (leading an article on the new wave of social media sites), and dealt with a true PR nightmare when Google search results revealed the credit card numbers of five users. Although five users represent a teeny tiny fraction of Blippy’s ever-expanding user base, it was the company’s worst fear brought to life. “Five accounts is too many, anything more than zero is unacceptable,” CEO Ashvin Kumar says. “It’s the worst thing that could happen.”
Within the next 24 hours, Blippy is expected to roll out a “go-forward plan” that will likely outline its security policy and assure users that their information is indeed safe with the site. Although Kumar confirms that there has not been a major exodus of users, this could not come soon enough. Let’s look at some of the lesson’s to be learned in Blippy’s case: → Read More
