I’m pleased to say that SayClip has made its way onto Mac OS X. This felt like a natural extension of the platform that started on iOS and the web, moved to Android, and now is part of OS X. The app really has seamless integration to users’ desktop screens because it runs off the menu bar similar to other apps, such as Dropbox. While it is running in the background, the app icon will be dark until you receive a “SayClip” from one of your contacts, at which point it will light up, just like the image above. This is a subtle indicator of a new message which users can respond to on their own time.

The app is quite dead simple to use and there is absolutely no learning curve. In fact, I believe a 5 year old could use it if they tried.

Here is an example of how the app runs, when there are no new messages:

Here is how it looks when there is a new message:

I think the great thing about being able to use SayClip from your desktop or laptop is mainly the ease of use, but the whole experience is much faster than using it from a mobile device. Uploading a message doesn’t take long at all, viewing a message, etc- nothing takes more than a few seconds to do. Since SayClip allows people to group message each other, this is a perfect tool for families to share special moments or even just say “hi” more often, privately- knowing only their recipients will be able to view the content and not anyone on the internet!

The app has been in private beta for the past few weeks and was being used across various continents. Users across these continents have expressed this has changed the way they’ve stayed in touch with family recently. No more waiting for those once a month Skype sessions with 8-12 hour time differences. No more expensive phone calls overseas. Even within the nation, people have expressed the ease of sending a message has made them kind of addicted to the service since they can send a simple “hello” while they are checking emails at work.

So I’ve given you my spiel, now go download SayClip for Mac OS X and let me know what YOU think! Head over to SayClip.com and click the ‘now available on Mac’ badge to download. By the way, it’s free. And there are no ads.

P.S. A lot of companies have forgotten about the desktop! Every tech company that matters has an iOS app and probably an Android app, but many have forgot that people spend the most time behind the screen of their computer when it comes to gadgets. This is one of the main reasons we’ve created a native SayClip Mac OS X app :)

A lot of you may know, I recently started SayClip. SayClip allows users to privately message their contacts through video. If you want to know why I created SayClip, you can read that here. You can download SayClip on iTunes here.

In this post, I’m going to give some thoughts on the social world.

It seems just about every new product that is launched in today’s world that relates to “social networking,” deals with some form of public communication. Whether it is sharing photos, videos, or just text, most things are open for the world to eavesdrop on. Social as we know it today, is screwed up. Being social with the world isn’t normal, and non-tech people that are over 20 are usually hesitant to tweeting their life secrets away. In all honesty, if you think about it, there’s some things that you could care less if 100 people other than the person you want to share a certain something with sees certain content, but quite frankly, there’s a lot more that you would say in a private situation. Lets take Skype for example, if you had a Skype conversation with your friend, you would be more direct and might share a lot more interesting things going on in your life, than you would on a UStream.tv stream.

This is why I am taking a highly private approach to SayClip. Being social is one thing, but being genuinely social is another. You might have 1000 Facebook friends, but who are your real friends that you can call in the middle of the night if your car breaks down to come pick you up? It’s connecting with those people that I want to enable, on a global scale.

So far, the app has been downloaded all across the world in a lot of different countries. This is something I hope increases communication between families or friends that live on different continents, something that gives a little substance to a message, instead of black and white text. Even saying a quick “hello” through a video clip is worth more than a text message saying “hello, how are you?” There is a web platform coming to SayClip in the next few days, which will allow people to communicate with app users, if they don’t have an iOS device. Of course the Android app will be made available shortly as well.

I’m making the world more social, in a private way.

Alright so, LinkedIn had its debut as a publicly traded company on Thursday. If you followed it- it exploded. My thoughts? It is absurd- now this is just my opinion, but I am going to say the stock will be worth way less than 1/2 what it is worth today, in 5 years worth of time. But that said, I think LinkedIn just played out the future for Facebook’s IPO and Twitter, if it plans to go public in the future also.

If you look at the earnings multiple and compare that to other companies, the other companies would be worth trillions. Hmmm….smells familiar. But back to Facebook and the future of social IPOs. In fact, I wouldn’t say just social IPOs, but everything related to social. Imagine Zynga having its IPO, etc. What LinkedIn did, Facebook will probably do with more noise, and quite possibly Twitter, too. The problem is that LinkedIn creates very little long term value (I feel). And the general population just doesn’t know that yet. However, a new startup BranchOut, will eat LinkedIn’s lunch, and dinner, and its fourthmeal.

Now that we’ve established that Facebook will have an even more jaw dropping debut on the public market, lets discuss how LinkedIn has a big problem.

BranchOut is basically LinkedIn ON Facebook. I should end my post here and just hit publish, but I’ll explain. People don’t want to be on 10 different services, that require remembering 10 different passwords, and connecting (finding) their contacts on those 10 networks over and over. Another problem is that some contacts are not on all 10 networks. BranchOut brings the LinkedIn features to Facebook (where the world *or at least 600 million people* lives). This makes it way too easy for people to career network on Facebook to even think about being on LinkedIn.

A lot of people might argue its good to keep social fun and social business apart from each other, but lets be honest, the world is becoming a more centralized place. We party with co-workers, and we work with friends. Others might think it will be questionable for BranchOut to build a layer on Facebook where it offers LinkedIn type functionality and the question that if BranchOut will be successful. But we can all learn a lesson from Zynga, whose supposedly valued in the billions, that building a layer on top of Facebook is possible, in a juggernaut way.

I could keep writing and express more opinions about this whole situation, but feel we should just keep it at that and watch what happens.

P.S. Congratulations to Reid and the team for such a successful exit!

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.