The absolute stupidest idea to come out of Web 2.0 & Social Media in 2009 – Blippy

No folks, there’s no need to go hunting for the utmost ridiculous idea to come out of 2009. It might have just scrapped under the wire with all the big fast food blogs handing out invite codes but there is no doubt – Blippy is a brain-dead idea.

When news about the service was first breathlessly broken to the world I wrote up my first impressions of the idea over at my home blog and had a bit of a conversation with Sean P. Aune in our nightly podcast about the in beta service. My feeling some fourteen days later hasn’t changed one iota.

For those of you who might not have the faintest clue as to what I am talking about here’s the gist of the Story of Blippy.

Sign up with the service.

Add one or more credit cards to your spanking new Blippy account.

As with Twitter add some people to your Blippy Followers list.

Go out and buy something using that credit card.

Then automagically what you have spent, where you spent the money and what you bought will be broadcasted to all your tag-along friends on Blippy.

Yes you read that right. You can broadcast to the world what you are buying and how much you have spent. Talk about a new way to “one up the Jones'”. Can someone please – please – tell me how this is in anyway a good idea?

In an interview with Liz Gannes over at GigaOM one of the founders of this <cough>brilliant</cough> idea, Philip “Pud” Kaplan, said that people need to get over the hump of being able to share this kind of personal information.

Uh .. No. No they don’t and neither should they just because some Social Media wanker says this is really cool idea and everyone should get in on the fun. On top of it all if you do decide to do something stupid and sign up for this Blippy defaults to share everything publicly – you actually have to go into whatever settings there and flip the switch to private.

Excuse me but this is only begging for something to go wrong. I can just see it now Christmas morning:

“Honey … where is that diamond ring that you bought the other day. You know .. the one that showed up on Blippy?”

“Uhmmmm .. ”

<Wife looks up the phone number to her lawyer>

Don’t think this will happen? Well in a world where Facebook entries are increasingly be used as grounds for divorce and lawyers are mining them for incriminating information there is no doubt that at some point Blippy will will find itself in the same place. Especially; as Kara Swisher noted in her post about the service, when Blippy inevitably integrates Facebook and Twitter as a way to expand its userbase.

Of course Mr. Breathless Blogger is back pimping a bunch more precious invites but regardless of the spin this is still the absolute stupidest idea to come of 2009. Period.