Blippy should return money to investors, if they haven’t spent it all on nail clippers.

Note: This post has been sitting in my queue for over a month or so now. TechCrunch recently posted this article talking about “the end of Blippy as we know it.” So I feel this post is relevant enough to share my thoughts through. Below is part of the original post, and everything in bold is written today.

Blippy was cool, for 5 minutes. A tool for sharing your credit card purchases seems 10 years too early for chances of success. Apprently, Blippy agrees, since it changed its model from just sharing to reviewing your purchases.

Blippy got a lot of press in its early days, but it seems to have failed to catch on and really take the internet by storm. I mean- do your friends really want to see what your bought? More so- do you really want to share what you’re buying at Walgreens? Perhaps, but I don’t.

I don’t even think an A-list celebrity user can have the masses flocking to use the service. The main problem arises with the age group. More young people would be inclined to use this type of product, but most young people don’t have credit cards. By the time they do- they probably have the sense of not posting everything they buy, online. I mean isn’t Facebook a problem for youngsters if they play sports or are looking for a job? Those pictures from that party can really damage their opportunities. Now think about spending money at a questionable establishment. That would really hurt their careers.

Aside from the concept, Blippy started giving away swag like nail clippers to users, which might have been okay, if the concept was worthy. This is a pure waste of capital in a startup. But I guess when a company has raised ample cash in a very short time, it makes them do silly things, without thinking them through.

But forget all that, assuming it’s all cool. Blippy exposed credit card numbers of some of its users. Now that is bad! Users can forgive and forget a company (especially a startup) for many things, but exposing sensitive information? Not so much. And you can’t blame them. When you tell people their credit card information is “secure” well- it better be. There is no reason why people would want to deal with secure information exposed and cleaning up that mess, especially when consumers are being “social” and sharing information willingly for such a controversial concept like Blippy.

More recently, the co-founder, Philip Kaplan has left Blippy and moved on to tinker around with iPhone apps. Cool, I guess. However, I think he should be sticking around and really re-focus the vision, if they plan to stay out of the deadpool.

The TechCrunch article mentions that Blippy is re-focusing the company, by creation of some social ecommerce tools, but frankly I just think they are avoiding the inevitable- the dealpool.