As we move more and more of our daily activities online, we are generating a lot of data about ourselves. The things we watch, listen to, play, rent, and buy all say something about us, and if you were to gather all that information into one place it could be pretty useful.
To whom, you ask? Our trusted friends and family, for starters. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather get a book recommendation from a close friend than from a system, regardless of how accurate the system’s algorithm is. The data we create is perfect for this.
In this article, I’ll show you two great websites that connect to your existing accounts and allow you to take the things you’ve consumed, review them, and share that information with others.
Blippy
Blippy is a popular website – or specialized social network - that lets you share your purchases and see what your friends are buying online and in real life. You can communicate about and share your reviewed purchases with friends by syncing your e-commerce accounts on sites like iTunes, Netflix, Woot, eBay, etc.
To start utilizing Blippy, just log in with your Facebook account. You’ll be prompted to enter your email address and pick a username to create your account. Then you’ll be set to start linking some accounts. If you’re worried about security, Blippy states that their page is “secure and protected with bank-level data security”.
Just so you know, Blippy will confirm with you which purchases you want everybody to see. Once it finds your purchases, you can begin writing reviews that will help your friends/family find things they may be interested in, but never knew about.
Why would you want to share your purchases with friends? Rather than trying to answer that with some random example or creative metaphor, I’ll let Blippy do the explaining:
Blippr
While Blippr may look and sound a lot like Blippy, I assure you it’s a completely different animal. Blippr revolves around media, like movies, books, and music. It’s a way to find media that you will like fast.
How many times have you asked a friend for a book recommendation, or for what she thought of the movie she saw last weekend? How about the last time you found a great new band through a colleague? We do it, all the time. So, we thought, how can we make it better?
Blippr learns about your tastes, both as you use it and through the people you connect to. We covered the site back in July of ’09 originally, but the information is a bit dated, so let me fresh your memory.
Finding apps, books, games, movies, and music you’ll love can be a lot easier if you didn’t have to sift through those long reviews written by people you don’t even know. Blippr allows you to connect your existing accounts with Netflix, Last.fm, Steam, and more. They’ll automatically collect the media you consume and place it in an easy-to-manage library where you can keep track of it.
You can begin by connecting through your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Share your opinions through reviews of your content and get your friends’ opinions in return. Then, you’ll start getting personalized recommendations based on all of your likes.
If you’re looking for a similar site/community, I also recommend you check out GetGlue.
Conclusion
See what I mean? Now you can take all of that data you’ve created online and put it to good use. Let it work for you and make it easier to find things you’ll love, as well as help those you care about find the things they love. By all means, this isn’t homework. Don’t think you have to write lots of in-depth reviews to get your point across. Treat them like tweets, 140 characters or less.
What do you think of these services? Will you be making use of the data you create?
Image Credit: Brailescu Cristian
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