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Social Media Meets Personal Finance with Blippy

Feb 25th, 2010 Comments Off

Blippy.com is an idea spawned by Ashvin Kumar, Chris Estreich, and Philip J. Kaplan that is being called “The Twitter of Personal Finance.”  The site posts the purchases you make to a live feed, which other users can then comment on and ask questions about.  Potential applications are limitless, but a few that come to mind are: finding the best deals on consumer electronics, finding out about new wines friends are purchasing, getting movie recommendations based on member’s Netflix activity, and finding new music based on friend’s iTunes purchases.  Critics say that the site exposes too much personal information.  What’s your opinion?

OpenForum.com on Blippy in their article
The 5 Most Innovative New Online Business Models in 2010:

If you don’t live your life in social media, the idea behind Blippy will likely confuse you. It is a social site that lets people automatically share the latest things they have purchased (and how much they paid for them) by linking the site to a single credit card. This level of transparency and sharing may seem crazy to many people, but the site represents a social experiment that points to an interesting opportunity for businesses whose customers may be used to sharing every small detail of their lives. It may be an outlier in this list of business models as they admittedly don’t have a revenue model for the site as yet – but the shift in what people are willing to share online is the real trend worth watching.

Social Media Can Affect Your Credit. Seriously!?

Feb 8th, 2010 Comments Off

Recently Personal Finance Expert turned Reporter Erica Sandberg released a shocking article about the latest social media practices in the credit and finance Industry.  Here’s a brief summary in her own words:

What’s going on: In hopes of identifying good credit customers, some financial institutions are tapping into the information you and your friends reveal online. The idea is that the friends you keep and data you disclose may help them make more accurate business decisions.

Who is doing it: Companies such as Rapleaf hunt and gather social networking transmissions, turning the conversations you have in your network into consumer profiles. These profiles provide banks with insight into your behavior patterns – what you like and dislike, want and don’t want, do well and do poorly.

How it’s being used: There are a couple of ways this information may be applied. It can help creditors promote certain products, cutting down on marketing waste. Why sent pre-approval letters to people not interested, right?

Lowering lending risk is another reason. Creditors can see if people in your network have accounts with them, and are free to look at how they are handling those accounts. The presumption is that if those in your network are responsible cardholders, there is a better chance you will be too. So, if a bank is on the fence about whether to extend you credit, you may become eligible if those in your network are good credit customers.

Having a robust online social network can also expedite loan acceptance. If you’re connected to a lot of people who are great credit risks, it can speed you through the process. Amazing, isn’t it?

What you can do. While financial institutions and companies that gather your online data are emphatic that the idea is to increase the odds of a person getting credit, what you reveal online can have unintended consequences. Therefore, if you want to opt out, turn all of your settings to private. Other best practices:

- Don’t accept invitations to your social networking site from people until you check their profiles out first.

- Be acutely aware of what you write. Don’t make public anything you don’t want public.

- Take an annual inventory of all your social networking sites and delete people and information that can potentially damage you in the eyes of a creditor or employer.

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