Introducing a Twitter for Credit Card Purchases

“Philip Kaplan earned notoriety and profit a decade ago with a site that chronicled the implosion of the Internet bubble. Now he is back with a project that seems sure to get attention again: Blippy, a soon-to-start online social network that lets you share details of your credit purchases with friends or strangers.

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Currently in invitation-only beta testing and headed for a public introduction in 2010, Blippy reports your credit card purchases (for example, “Alice spent $47.60 at Macy’s”) to others, as if the transactions were tweets on Twitter or Facebook status updates.

Mr. Kaplan spoke about Blippy earlier this week. A condensed version of the conversation follows.

Q. Before we start — on Aug. 30, you tweeted: “Getting married. About to walk down aisle. Putting phone on vibrate.” Really?

A. Yes, that was true. I was about to walk down, and at the last moment I realized my phone was still on, so I tweeted that out real quick. My wife is also a fan of technology, so she appreciated it.

Q. So how does Blippy work?

A. The idea is that most Americans have two or three credit cards in their wallet. You sign one of them up to be the social card — it’s connected to the site. The other cards you keep private. If I use my public card at a Starbucks, for instance, all my friends know that I’m at the Starbucks, and they can come and see me, or whatever.

Q. And you wouldn’t need to announce that via Twitter — it just shows up online?

A. We call it passive sharing.

Q. But even on my public card, I’d control who sees what I’m buying?

A. You can make your account public or private, like on Twitter where you can protect your stream and only people you approve will see it. And it’s only going to show the charges you want it to show. Some people are only sharing their iTunes or Amazon purchases. The cool thing about iTunes and Amazon is that you can show the exact product that you’re buying, not just the amount.

Q. So you’re not going to sell me out when I buy a Wang Chung song online?

A. You won’t have to worry about any private information being sold.

Q. Talk about conspicuous consumption. This probably isn’t for everyone.

A. I guess you need to have the right temperament if you to want to blog and tweet and Facebook and all that. It’s just another way of saying, “Here’s what I’m doing,” or “Here’s where I am,” or “Here’s a band that I’m really into” — obviously, because I just bought five of their albums.

There are roughly 100 people using the site now, friends of ours. It’s going to be invite-only for a while. The best thing is the unintended coincidences that happen. My brother spent $4,000 at Crutchfield, an electronics store. I asked him what he bought, and he said a TV. I said: “I’m in the market for a TV. That looks a little expensive, but tell me about it.” He had done all this research — who knew? I wouldn’t have known which of my trusted friends to ask about it.

Q. Is this a Twitter app?

A. It’s not currently tied in with any other social network. It looks similar to Twitter but our data is structured. Unlike a Tweet or a Facebook status update, every “Blip” — as we’re calling them — is the same format, which is: “X spent Y dollars at Z.” You can click on the Z to see who else spent money at Z. Or you can click on the X to see what else that person is buying.”