Amazon Stops Blippy From Revealing Its Purchase Data
Blippy is an unusual social networking service that blasts the credit card purchases of its users on to the Internet for everyone to see. Amazon.com asked Blippy not to publish anymore of its data and to delete all of the data it had collected to date. Blippy complied with Amazon.com's request. TechCrunch talked with Blippy cofounder Philip Kaplan about the situation. Kaplan says he hoping they can come to an agreement with Amazon.com about using its purchase data.
He says they didn't block Blippy, but simply insisted that the service stop pulling user purchase data, and erase all historical data they had already collected. They were also summoned to Seattle to speak with a "high ranking executive" of the company. Blippy complied (with both the summons and the demand to stop accessing user data).
Kaplan is soft stepping around the Amazon issue, and is hoping to come to some agreement with the company to allow them to access data in the future. He says "We believe our users feel strongly, as we do, that it is their right to access and use their data however they want. We're optimistic that Amazon will come to the same conclusion."
Blippy still posts updates when Blippy users spend money at Amazon.com but it no longer provides any information about what they purchased. You can read our previous post about Blippy here.
