Swipely

Social networking for consumers. Swipely collects the purchase data from members' credit card and debit card transactions, both online and offline, and members choose which to post as "Swipes". Your friends (imported from Facebook if you wish) may all comment and like your Swipes, and do all those social networking things you do in social networking. The scheme has been in a private beta for a year but has just gone public and is free to join. It's the first attempt that I know of to use your actual purchasing data as a basis for a social network, and if you think that telling the world what you own and where you buy it is a great basis for making new friends, then you'll love this. However, there are limits, so you can't reveal how much you paid as part of your Swipe, though I guess you can do it as a comment. The plan is clearly to make the whole thing a lot of fun, in pursuit of which you will be able to win badges, become VIPs at certain stores, get offers of discounts, and so on. Unfortunately the Swipely site offers hardly any information as yet, and I had to resort to other sources to understand what it's about (which I may still not, so please correct me if you know better). Once it's off the ground properly, though, it could well be the next Big Thing in social networking. The developers must think so, because they're already partnering with the major financial institutions and thousands of online and offline outlets. They're all veterans of other, bigger and more successful online ventures such as Ebay and PayPal, too, so they should have a good sense of the potential here. [edit] After writing this I found blippy.com, which is another interpretation of social networking using purchasing data: http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.blippy.com

Received another sales call from Swipely today and when I told them I wasn't interested the sales person put me in my place "you're just the general manager, have you even talked to the owner about it?" That is not the way to get anywhere in sales and I am the owner!