New Credit Card Ideas: Post purchase info online to make friends

2010 is a year full of technological surprises and innovations, from new types of electronic book readers and Internet-enabled cell phones to the fast-selling Apple iPad computer device. Meanwhile social networking is occupying the time of hundreds of millions of people of all ages. People are constantly using devices and sites like Twitter and Facebook to connect or reconnect with friends, do business networking, post blogs or videos, keep up with their celebrity icons, or just get a glimpse into the lives of other people in the tech-connected universe. But now, in addition to the many social shopping Web sites that have been around for a long time, there is a new trend emerging that involving tracking your purchases through social media mechanisms.

The newest contributor to this rather strange and different kind of high-tech social networking phenomenon is a company called Swipely. Swipely basically tracks your credit card swipes – and those of lots of other people – in such a way that consumers like yourself can instantly and automatically post information about what they bought with plastic online. Then you can talk about those purchases and credit card swipes with your friends.

If you have lots of extra cash burning a hole in your pocket these days and are looking for a way to invest in futuristic technological ventures related to the exploding world of social networking, you might want to look into become an investor in Swipely, Inc. Already the company has raised about $8 million in financing from professional investors like Greylock Partners, First Round Capital, and SV Angel. Before that the founders of the Swipely venture has a million bucks in seed capital, and the CEO of the organization is Angus Davis, a successful entrepreneur who used to work for Netscape Communications. Davis later launched a company that was sold a few years ago to Microsoft for close to a billion dollars in cash.

Although this idea of sharing credit card purchase info with other people on the Web makes some people skeptical that it can succeed, there is already another company doing the same kind of thing. Blippy – a company that also has millions of dollars in investment money – posts your purchases and the dollar amount that you spent. Swipely decided to do things a bit differently, so while it lets you post info about what you buy, it doesn't reveal to others how much you actually spent. So if you snagged a real bargain you may have to go online and talk it up and brag about on your own.

Explaining the appeal of his Swipely company and its service, and defending the decision not to post dollar amounts of purchases, CEO Davis said “It's about telling a story. It's about what you bought, where and why, not how much.

So if you join Swipely you will then basically log on, view the purchases you made, determine which ones you want other people to see, and then direct the site to post just those. Or you can set your preferences to post info about all of the purchases you make with your plastic. You can also email your receipts to Swipely or let the service automatically upload that info from merchants with whom you transact credit card business.

CEO Davis says that in practice, lots of people who are socializing through Swipely don't just concentrate on what they bought, but they use their purchases as a starting point for a friendship. Once people break the ice based on buying habits, for example, they often make other social connections. Maybe you posted a purchase of a plane ticket to Rome or the fact that you bought a new pair of shoes in Tokyo. Someone interested in learning more about Italy might strike up an online conversation with you because they notice you went to Rome. Or maybe you'll meet some other people who like to buy shoes because of your Japan purchase. Then again you might get messages from people who are really into Japanese sushi or Tokyo pop culture.

Swipely also says it could help you out in practical ways that the company is still working to develop and refine. Davis gave one example, saying that Swipely may soon be able to track your purchases and then send you an alert or notification to let you know that you might be able to buy the same item nearby for a better price. If you buy gasoline for $3 a gallon, for example, Swipely may be able to inform you that a gas station a block away has gas for only $2.80 per gallon.

But Davis likens Swipely and its appeal to that of other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and he thinks it will appeal to people in similar ways as a forum for making new and interesting social connections.