50 Top Startups from 2010: Acquired, Pivoted or Still Going?

Editor's Note:

This is one of the longest posts I've made - in length and duration. It's said that one year in the life of a startup is the equivalent of dog years when compared to more established companies. So looking back to a post I made just over four years ago is the equivalent of a generation of startups, and a quick glance at each shows what you'd expect from a generation of change - with some names graduating to the big time, others running in place, and yet a good chunk who've disappeared altogether.

My goal with this June 2010 post was not to highlight the top private companies, as I withheld inclusion of many of the bigger companies, like Facebook and Twitter and Tesla. Instead, it was to show 50 I was following that had promise, leveraging a tool from Symbaloo. I highlighted 50 top startups on the Web. I was reminded of this effort when, at the conclusion of my kids' kindergarten year, many teachers featured computers with Symbaloo organizing their Web.

So let's go back to the list of fifty, and see what's happened. How many are on the verge of hitting the big time, how many are out of business, and how many got acquired?

Walking Down Fifty Top Startups of 2010

#1: Foursquare	Status: Independent
At the time of the post, there was no buzzier company than Foursquare. It was the undisputed leader of the checkin. It beat back competition from Facebook Places, and its places database became the backend of even more third party apps. But its Swarm app has seemed to fall flat among users, and nobody's quite sure where the company's headed.

#2: Spotify	Status: Independent
At the time of my post, Spotify hadn't even made it to the US. Now it has 1,000+ employees and is the clear market leader in streaming music, with Apple's Beats and others chasing. The company is looking to finish the music business revolution started by Napster more than a decade ago, and remains one of my favorites.

#3: Automattic	Status: Independent
Automattic, the company behind WordPress, isn't going anywhere. They've got about 250 employees, and have been acquiring small services like Intense Debate, instead of getting gobbled themselves. They haven't had a big exit like Tumblr, or become a small part of a big company, like Blogger at Google, but they're a lead option for publishing, from blogs to full-featured sites.

#4: Posterous	Status: Acquired by Twitter
Posterous was acquired by Twitter in 2012, and while they initially promised their Spaces service for private blogging would remain live, it was quickly killed, becoming yet another acquihire. They'd raised $10 million overall.

#5: Blippy

Status: Pivoted beyond recognition

The Blippy I liked didn't turn out how I had hoped. Its initial privacy bump with credit cards being revealed online came at an inconvenient time, right as they raised funding and were poised to come out of the gate strong. That, combined, with an audience skeptical of their focus on oversharing, meant they had to do the dreaded pivot. Phil Kaplan, cofounder of Blippy, left with momentum flagging. Now they're an app for animated GIFs.

#6: SlideShare	Status: Acquired by LinkedIn
In 2012, Slideshare was acquired by LinkedIn for a rumored $119 million. That'd probably be around $300 million in today's inflated market.

#7: Tumblr	Status: Acquired by Yahoo.
Following incredible traffic growth, Tumblr became the biggest acquisition made by Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer, who has a tough task to transform a Web pioneer. The $1.1 billion deal in May of 2013 was huge in many ways.

#8 TweetDeck	Status: Acquired by Twitter.
The social networking client (which debuted here in 2008) was won by Twitter in a bid above $40 million, after a rumored buy from Ubermedia. TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth has since left Twitter, and is working in stealth on Gathers.

#9: Square	Status: Independent
The company, headed by Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter, made a stake for itself in an incredibly challenging market, and you can see their payment readers in small businesses or cabs. You could argue they got too big too fast, or margins are tight, but they've neither crashed nor graduated since the first report.

#10: Quora

Status: Independent

Quora is an odd duck. They were a Web darling at the end of 2010, founded by early Facebookers, and attracting engagement from a who's who of Silicon Valley. With one founder jetissoned, and the company now being a fifth wheel at Y Combinator, it's not sure whether they're the next Wikipedia or Yahoo! Answers. Nobody really questions the quality of the discussions, but everything else is questioned.

#11: CinchCast	Status: Pivoted beyond recognition
The audio Web publishing service I really liked, and used regularly, is vaporized, as was my published content. The shadows of that plan show a site focused on cloud-based conference calls and Web seminars. Meh.

#12: Sports Blog Nation

Status: Independent

If you don't remember the name Sports Blog Nation, I'll bet you've seen their content. This one time sports publishing empire expanded to what's now Vox Media, taking on smart writing for tech and much more. I've been lucky enough to see this happen in front of us over the last decade, and consider the founder of SB Nation, Tyler Bleszinski, a fellow A's fan, a good friend. If there are any questions about Vox Media, it's whether the content business can be valued in a world where it's so easy to make it for free.

#13: Bit.ly	Status: Independent.
Once Twitter switched to its own t.co URL shortener, bit.ly's perceived value for short link and analytics dropped dramatically. The company refocused on performance tracking and engagement, and is still plugging away, even if you don't hear about them daily, as you used to.

#14: my6sense	Status: Independent.
Months after my initial post, I expanded my time helping my6sense from consulting to something closer to full time as VP of Marketing. We launched a lot of cool tools, but there wasn't a big enough market (or funding) to make that dream a reality. So I left to Google, and the team refocused on mobile advertising. Founder Barak Hachamov is now working on Samba.me, a reactive video messaging play.

#15: Thing Labs	Status: Acquired by AOL.
Thing Labs, and the Brizzly team, were acquired by AOL after getting an offer in July of 2010, which I had incorrectly hypothesized was from Foursquare. Soon after, Brizzly was shut down, and the team splintered inside of AOL, to take up roost at Avocado, Dropbox and other places.

#16: Plancast	Status: Pivoted beyond recognition
Plancast was given a funeral and the post-mortem was written in early 2012. The social events sharing company just didn't take off. The site still exists, focused on planning and event management.

#17: Seesmic	Status: Acquired by Hootsuite.
After a bazillion pivots, and clear buddying up with Salesforce and Microsoft, the remnants of Seesmic were sold to Hootsuite in 2012. Founder Loic LeMeur seems to have retrenched into his annual conference, LeWeb.

#18: Lunch.com	Status: Independent.
Lunch.com, a community around relevant news and opinion, has been very quiet - but seems to have its diehard users, as many of these sites get. I'd bet it doesn't cost much to run, so there's no urgency to shut it down, but it's hard to predict a rebound.

#19: Gowalla	Status: Acquired by Facebook.
After years of chasing Foursquare's fumes, Gowalla's team waved the white flag, and was acquired by Facebook in December 2011.

#20: DropBox	Status: Independent.
DropBox is a consumer cloud giant, and has managed a significant position, even when faced with industry competition from practically all the big names: Google, Microsoft, Apple, Salesforce to name a few. The world awaits what will happen once DropBox goes public.

#21: Lazyfeed	Status: Dead
The lead developer made many intesting apps, including a Twitter and RSS mashup LazyScope, and Joint.im, but users haven't always followed. So Lazyfeed is gone.

#22: Hunch	Status: Acquired by eBay.
The consumer-focused personalization company pivoted to providing services for businesses, and looks like a good fit for the online auction giant.

#23: Ecademy	Status: Acquired by Sunzu
Ecademy was acquired by Sunzu in July of 2012, and the open business networking community's content was later vaporized. Most the original Ecademy team is now working on social media tactics with Scredible.

#24: Xobni	Status: Acquired by Yahoo!
Initially rumored to join Microsoft in 2008, the address book apps and plugins group was acquired by Yahoo! as part of Marissa Mayer's buying binge in the summer of 2013.

#25: Tweetmeme	Status: Dead.
Nik Halstead's smart consumer facing link site that pulled content from Twitter was sunset in 2012 in favor of analytics and more professional work, a move that made sense when Twitter reduced opportunities for consumer-facing developers.

#26: Feedly	Status: Independent.
Even if Google Reader is dead (a moment of silence, please), RSS isn't. Feedly was among the most obvious to benefit from the feed reader giant's closure. Nobody really asks how Feedly makes money or what its future plans are… just that it keep working and doing well. It does. As they debuted here, I'm always happy to hear good news from team Feedly.

#27: Klout	Status: Acquired by Lithium Technologies
I despise the idea of Klout. Independent arbiters giving you a score is distasteful. But that didn't stop the company from being famous (or infamous) and at least one other company deciding that their stockpile of data and faux reputation was worth paying for. So that happened. Congrats to the team.

#28: Justin.tv	Status: Independent
Justin.TV is still around, while most of the team(including Justin himself) now is working on Twitch.tv, a games streaming platform. Justin.TV recently told customers that videos will no longer be archived, since nobody was watching anyway. I have to assume most people at this point are watching YouTube.

#29: Amplify	Status: Dead
The Amplify we once knew, which encouraged you to build and share something between a tweet and a blog post, is gone - shutting down in February of 2012. Ironically, they pointed users to web clipping service Clipboard, which itself was shut down after being acquired by Salesforce.com a year or so later.

#30: OneRiot	Status: Acquired by Walmart Labs
After pivoting from the unfriendly world of real time search to the world of ad networks, OneRiot was picked up by the active, if not lofty, palace of Walmart Labs in September 2011.

#31: Lijit	Status: Acquired by Federated Media
Lijit has had its share of bumps over the last four years. The company was picked up by Federated Media in October 2011, and in early 2014, spun out when Federated Media sold off its content business in the beginning of this year. Now, Lijit claims they're back, under a new name. Lost? Me too.

#32: Echo	Status: Independent
Echo may first have been known as a comments competitor to Disqus and others, and was among the first to capture reactions from the real-time stream. They successfully moved to aid enterprise companies with adding social platforms and engagement with their platform. They're quietly executing - even if an endgame isn't obvious.

#33: MyLikes	Status: Independent
MyLikes bills itself as the largest content and advertising platform in the world and has a top-notch board. The social advertising platform raised just under $6 million in 2010, and isn't noisy about trumpeting its success. Side note: Robert Scoble and I were introduced as advisors in early 2010 when they raised seed funding, but things are quiet on that front.

#34: Outbrain	Status: Independent
Outbrain, like it or hate it, is most well know for its “more like this” or “you might also like this” type of content ads spread across the web. Their goal is more engagement on content, and they do a great job at it. They've raised nearly $100 million, with the last round being in 2013.

#35: DailyBooth	Status: Acquired by AirBnB
In a “you didn't see that coming” deal, the photo sharing site team behind DailyBooth ended up as an acquihire for dodgy rental service AirBnB in the summer of 2012. Meanwhile, DailyBooth is dead.

#36: Gist	Status: Acquired by Blackberry (RIM)
Gist, the one-time contacts manager, was acquired by Blackberry in early 2011. A little more than a year later, news came that Blackberry would shut down the original site. Oh well.

#37: Soluto	Status: Acquired by Asurion
The cloud service for remotely managing devices was acquired for more than $100 million by insurer Asurion in late 2013. Maybe not an exciting ending, but the checks still clear the bank - a good turn for $18 million funding by VCs.

#38: Tungle.me	Status: Acquired by Blackberry (RIM)
As with Gist, social calendaring app Tungle was acquired in early 2011 by Blackberry to improve their software suite.

#39: Qwotebook	Status: Dead
A fun idea for a quote repository and database, started by my good friend Drew Olanoff (and listing me as an advisor) didn't really get off the ground. Next time.

#40: Regator	Status: Independent
Blog and content directory Regator is still tracking blog trends and aggregating news from the Web. But I haven't heard a word from them in some time, and they're not talking.

#41: Untitled Startup	Status: Independent (with a new name)
Damon Cortesi's untitled startup ended up being Simply Measured. The social media analytics company now sports 159 employees and says it's used by more than ⅓ of the top 100 global brands. Hats off to you, Damon. I knew this was one to watch.

#42: Twazzup	Status: Independent (but mostly dead)
Twitter's battles with developers over web clients and search made some promising ventures less so over time. Founder Cyril Moutran lists his time at Twazzup as ending in 2011 on his LinkedIn profile, spending more time on his role with Feedly.

#43: The Cadmus	Status: Dead
The Cadmus is no longer being maintained, but the team behind the Twitter analysis tool is working on a host of new products under the name Anomaly Innovations in San Francisco.

#44: Branchr	Status: Dead
The one time text and image-based pay per click advertising company, who once claimed hundreds of millions of ads on tens of thousands of sites, seemingly vaporized. Web site? Gone. Twitter account? Dead. Huh.

#45: Graphic.ly	Status: Acquired by Blurb
Graphic.ly, the comic book enthusiasts platform, was integrated into Blurb earlier this year, having raised about $10 million in funding.

#46: BlockChalk	Status: Acquired by Klout
BlockChalk, a Twitter-centric community bulletin board, renamed itself BlockBoard, and was later turned into an acquihire by Klout (see above) in February 2012.

#47: FitBit

Status: Independent

FitBit, in my view, lit the fire of the wearable gadget revolution. They're the default fitness tracker, competing with Nike, Jawbone and others, and I've been a devout user for the better part of two years - even if I wasn't at time of this post in 2010. So far, they've managed to keep independent. I'd see them being picked up by a big company before seeing them go public, but if they did, I'd invest.

#48: RockMelt	Status: Acquired by Yahoo!
Yahoo acquired Rockmelt in 2013 and the products were shut down shortly afterward, despite rock star visibility at launch, and the support of Marc Andreesen.

#49: Live Intent	Status: Independent
LiveIntent is focused on email advertising and engagement. They've been at it since 2009. And they're hiring. But if I had to do this list again, they're probably not top of mind.

#50: Fabulis

Status: Pivoted beyond recognition

I loved Jason Goldberg's Socialmedian, and launched it here. Fabulis was his next attempt, a social network for gay men. I liked the idea, but wasn't the target market. When Fabulis pivoted into Fab.com, and had a meteoric rise for flash sales and other online commerce, I was again cheering on Jason from the sidelines, and root him on through the subsequent downturn. We'll see what happens with Fab, but Fabulis is most certainly dead.

Summary

I never claimed I was ranking these fifty startups as the most likely to succeed, or ranking them in order, although it's easy to see the first ten named were stronger than the last ten in my list. But when the list was posted and people questioned the longevity of these companies, I knew it would take time to bear it out. With four-plus year hindsight, we have those results.

Of the fifty companies named, 21 are independent, 19 were acquired, four pivoted, and six are dead. I expected more to be dead, outright, but it shows me many companies in search of an out found a willing corporate partner - be it another startup, or a large company, be it Blackberry, LinkedIn, Yahoo! or eBay. Tumblr sold for more than a billion, and Spotify is valued at much more. Others, no doubt, went for nothing except a handshake. Interestingly, none of these 50 were acquired by Google.

If I were to do this again, with hindsight, there'd be less focus on Twitter tools, but in 2010, one thought Twitter's platform was not just an interesting testbed, but potentially a big business. And I didn't even mention Uber.

Meanwhile, Symbaloo, who hosted my original list of fifty… they're still around - and found a niche.

Bubbalon: Fun Ratings, Reviews and Sentiment Sharing

On the Internet, it seems there's little more we enjoy doing than telling people what we like and what we don't. Facebook's Like button is becoming ubiquitous, and there are many sites that let you review movies you've seen, give star ratings to products you've purchased and restaurants you've visited. Yelp, Amazon and Rotten Tomatoes have built successful businesses with reviews at the core. Reviews are also a major reason I became so hooked on Blippy - not just getting to share my purchase habits, but to tell you why and learn from your own experience. A new-ish startup called Bubbalon recently caught my eye, and they've managed to make community ratings and reviews of products, people and events fun - delivering a sentiment rating that you can dive into, not just globally, but across your friends, or even across demographics you choose.

The objective of Bubbalon is to surface how people feel about products, brands or people. Of course, to encourage participation, users are provided ratings derived from their activity on site, from rating sites to leaving comments, adding objects and acting as a moderator.

Rating McDonald's On Bubbalon

Unlike some niche sites that focus on a specific topic, Bubbalon's treasure trove of objects is open-ended, from big brands like McDonald's and Samsung Electronics, to products like the iPhone 4 and Samsung Epic 4G, people, like Glenn Beck, or even blogs. It turns out louisgray.com has racked up 10 reviews - most positive.

A Discussion on Diet Coke Where I am Outnumbered

But beyond the total rating scores, reviews and comments, Bubbalon has more than a simple slider for each object. The site remembers your own rating for each object, of course, but also shows the world's average score, an average score from your friends on the site (which you can synch with Facebook), and if you're aggressive, you can even tell it to show you a rating based on gender, location and age criteria. This way, if you want to really find out what 18-40 year old guys in California think about McDonald's, you can get that score.

Reviewing Samsung and Adding a Comment

Incredibly, one of the more interesting popular items on Bubbalon has been the East Coast Blizzard 2010 page. While some folks are calling it "Bad", many more are saying the storm is "Excellent", saying they love the snow. This current event is one of many News items that have hit Bubbalon, from the BP Oil Spill to the Ground Zero Mosque, and the Rescue of Chilean Miners.

While I am newer to the site, and many other folks have a great deal more history, you can find my profile here. It'd be a great way to quickly drop in and add sentiment to any of the products or people you like or dislike. Bubbalon demoed at the TechCrunch Disrupt event this fall and was written up by Down the Avenue, including aspects of their location sync with Foursquare. There's an option, should you dare, to pull your Foursquare checkins to Bubbalon and rate them there.

You can follow Bubbalon on Twittter at @bubbalon. I am on Bubbalon at http://bubbalon.com/user/1011.

2010 In Web Services: My Top Ten Sites

    
    
    

As with my top gadgets list for 2010, this year's list is personal. It's what I use, and what I found had the most impact for me in 2010, which I found myself using every day. The services themselves are limited to being Web-based, so I am not talking about those which are primarily iOS or Android apps, but if they do have a mobile equivalent it helps. What I've found in the way I use the many Web services and sites that take my time is that I may find things first, and I don't always enjoy those which are most popular, but once I do find real value, I am as loyal as they come.

That said, here are the sites that had significant impact on me and my family in 2010. Your mileage may vary.

1) Redfin

2010 saw the arrival of baby #3 in our family. Braden, who joined us in late August, made his potential known at the beginning of the year, and this forced us to start planning a process to move up and out of our condo. With Bay Area housing prices a volatile, yet always expensive, thing, we had to use the best resources available to help navigate the housing search.

Without any hesitation, I can say Redfin saved us. We set the required criteria for potential homes to fit our growing brood, and started getting alerts in the Spring as we set favorites, getting to learn the trends in each sale and seeing the macroeconomics of the market in a microscope. Needless to say, if a home wasn't listed on Redfin.com, we didn't find it, and it's their loss. Even after buying our home in July and moving across town, I frequently use it to follow home sales in the area, and keep sure that we got the best deal for the best place we could afford.

Redfin quite possibly saved us hundreds to a thousand or more a month, or could even have meant another bedroom afforded or a shorter commute. The value is unmistakable.

2) Mint.com

Planning for both the sale of our condo and purchase of our home simultaneously, while navigating the growth of Paladin and transition to my6sense this year, has required an eagle eye into our finances, seeing how our spending has trended, up and down, and managing money flow. Mint.com has become an essential stop for keeping tabs on our home value, 401k status, bank and credit accounts to show us whether we broke even each month, or if we didn't, what the root causes were.

Planning ahead and our focus on the specifics led to our loan operators' excitement when they found we actually had already paid the 20% down on our new home, and I heavily leveraged Mint.com to balance the process, even as we had to close our purchase before the sale of our condo had closed. Doing it without Mint.com would have been a complete pain.

3) Google Reader

Even with the rise of real-time news, Google Reader's ability to catch all my RSS subscriptions in one place is unmatched. Though I have actively scaled back some of the busier or more redundant sites of late to get more time back, Reader is a cornerstone for my information consumption. It, of course, is also a major player in feeding my6sense. That I had encouraged comments and sharing of content from my Google Reader shares led to an easy transition to Google Buzz when it arrived earlier this year as well.

4) Spotify

Thanks to early tech blogger access, I have enjoyed the mainlining of music Spotify has offered for the entirety of 2010, and I've been enjoying Spotify for about 16 months by this point, without the service making US support official. Spotify is practically a music nirvana, with all the best stuff just a search away, on my Mac, our iPads or any of my Android devices. The tie-in with Sonos doubles down on the brilliance as well, delivering all the world's music anywhere in my house. For anybody in love with Last.fm, Pandora, Napster, Rhapsody, Rdio or the rest, Spotify is like getting called up to the big leagues from the minors. Practically the only time I ever visit iTunes now is to download application updates for our iPads.

When I hear new albums from my favorite artists have debuted, I don't go to Amazon.com like I once did, or iTunes. I just go to Spotify, and it seems they are always there. The fact I can call up any song and choose any point in that song and never suffer buffering or sound quality issues is seemingly magic.

5) Twitter

Twitter became even more useful in 2010 than in early years after I dramatically scaled back who I followed, set up customized lists, and gained the ability to sort the service's many updates by relevance, or show only those with links, in my6sense. Removing the link-free updates from Twitter practically put the service on the same pedestal as Google Reader RSS. On the desktop, I continue to use Tweetie for Mac, with its integrated multi-account support, tracking Paladin clients and my6sense, including keyword searches, @replies and any other discussions that could flare at any time.

To use Twitter in isolation from the rest of the Web would starve you of oxygen. But at this point, using the rest of the Web and avoiding Twitter could be similarly bad. News breaks on Twitter and your brand and products can win or lose 140 characters at a time.

6) OneTrueFan

I am gaga over OneTrueFan, not because of the gamesmanship, or even due to its top news feature just launched, but instead due to the potential for discovery from peers of mine to new sites and sources for news. OneTrueFan helps me find out where established folks who I respect are getting their news, or what services they find critical. OneTrueFan manages to be incredibly useful while also being fun. When on the desktop, I use OneTrueFan's browser bar to share articles to Twitter and Facebook, knowing I'll be rewarded for bringing new readers to the story, and to see just how effective my shares were - much like Bit.ly analytics for the entire Web.

This is the second go-round for this team, who spawned and sold MyBlogLog to Yahoo! years ago, who promptly put it through their "How to Botch an Acquisition 101" course. The band is back together and you should wait for some sweet sweet music as they build a horizontal social network that spans all the sites you visit.

7) Google Buzz

For a long-time FriendFeed devotee, the debut of Google Buzz earlier this year, delivering smart aggregation by a company promising to support it, was like manna from heaven. Pad on linking with Google Reader shares, and you could see serious potential. I wasn't as big a fan of it being locked down into a Gmail experience, but believed in its open standards pedigree and corporate promises for fast innovation. I also was one of the few who heard their caution about not taking Facebook and Twitter head-on, but looking to foster a community within Gmail.

Public bumps stalled the service's potential growth out of the gate, and while I enjoy the community a great deal there, and visit every day, it is not as big as it could be, never having launched a dedicated site, where I would spend much more time, and quietly working on its innovations, not making good news when it was available. Without having any detailed insight, I think it is safe to assume that Buzz and the Buzz experience will play a strong role in whatever Google's future social plans for 2011 will be.

8) Blippy

Speaking of amazing services with public privacy bumps that didn't get the press eating out of their hand, Blippy has evolved to play a much bigger role in my online experience than I had first anticipated. Blippy in my mind is the next step after you've first told us you "like" something, and then "checked in" on Foursquare. Blippy shows you what you did when you got there, with your own money. The company is making a real product graph to help connect consumers and bring intelligent reviews to your purchase streams.

Blippy now has pulled in about $100 million in purchases through its site. That's a good chunk of consumer data. Aren't you intrigued by what brands would want to know about these folks? Don't you want to know how Blippy will leverage this gold mine? I do.

9) Zillow

The companion piece to Redfin, Zillow helps provide value estimates for homes practically anywhere - even if they are not on the market, with trends showing if the prices are rising, falling or stable, with 1 year and 5 year histories being especially useful. As someone who just bought a home, I get a lot of fun out of keeping Zillow open on my phone as we walk the kids around the neighborhood to get an idea of the homes we are passing, and their history, or simply getting incremental updates to see if the value of our home has increased since we bought it five months ago. (It has)

10) IceRocket

Yes, Icerocket. Icerocket is the best blog search and Twitter search tool on the planet, period. That you're not using it every day means you haven't figured out why you should. I check IceRocket to watch for mentions of my activity and content in Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Video and Photo sites daily, as well as those for companies I interact with.

Missing the Buzz? Check out http://louisgray.icerocket.com/ to see what IceRocket has on me or http://my6sense.icerocket.com/ for my6sense, for example. Technorati has changed its focus. Google Blog Search seems neglected at best. IceRocket may not have the brand pizazz, but it's the best.

So who didn't I mention? Quora? Quora's cool, and maybe in 2011, it will play a bigger role, but it hasn't yet made a major impact for me in how I use the Web. Foursquare? That's a mobile experience for me. In June, I wrote up 50 startups worth watching, and that included many of these as well as others. So for a broader scope of companies I am seeing, that's not bad (from 6 months ago). Why isn't Facebook here and Twitter is? Good question. I do use Facebook a lot, but that's like telling the world I use e-mail. Duh. I didn't feel a need to tell you I use Blogger either. That's obvious. So where are you spending the most time, and am I crazy to put sites like Blippy, IceRocket and OneTrueFan so high?

Solving Privacy On the Web: Be Smart, Not Scared

When it comes to the amount of data I share about myself and my family on the Web, there's little question that I am at the odd end of the bell curve. It's not a secret what my family structure looks like. My kids' real names are out there to be discovered, as is my birthday, hometown, religion, political preference and much more. You can see real photos of me and my family if you search hard enough, and videos too.

I use Foursquare to share location data. I use Blippy to share purchase history, and I even use OneTrueFan to make my Web visits public. This hasn't been done with a reckless approach to privacy where I have thrown caution to the wind, but instead, has been more calculated. I believe the major trends on the Web encourage sharing, and if I can be the one sharing and not reacting, I am ahead of the game.

See CNN: The Internet and the 'End of Privacy' for their insight into my sharing behavior.

Some would look at what I choose to share and could suggest I feel that privacy is "dead". I don't believe this at all. What I do believe, however, is that intelligent sharing and knowledge of where personal data is distributed can bring value. Rather than take a more conservative approach, locking down what in other generations would be secret, I've opted to own what is shared, and to operate my life as if what I was not sharing explicitly would not be a disaster if it eventually were to be surfaced.

One needs to look no further than Facebook, the world's dominant social network, to see how the company's approach to privacy has changed in the last few years. Once a stalwart site prized for how it protected your content from prying eyes, more content has become public in practically each update. While some have suggested the best solution is to lock down one's profile, I have instead assumed the content will eventually become public and discoverable, shared to advertisers. This was one reason I downloaded an archive and self-hosted it, making the full copy available myself. (See: http://www.louisgray.com/facebook/)

But even with my level of publicness comes limits. I don't think it makes sense to chronicle the minutiae of my day through status updates. I don't muddy my main broadcast channels with location details, shopping updates or entertainment. I don't air embarrassing scenes with my wife or my kids. I don't post content of them that would be unflattering. And I try not to bore people with inane blather.

For me, the major reason I don't share some things is not because I am frightened my content will be used against me. After all, it took a simple e-mail account hack to get me fighting back on that front earlier this summer, and it wasn't tracked to my use of any of these sites. The major reason I don't overshare is because I believe it wouldn't add value and it would be boring to all who saw it.

In a conversation I recently had with a reporter from CNN.com, he asked if there were parts of my life I would be reticent to share if my transparency were further peeled back. The answer was essentially no. The trick is to live your life in a way that if your employer or future spouse were checking in on you, you would have nothing to fear. This doesn't mean you can't have a good time, but you should assume a consequence if your actions were to become public. Manage yourself well and what's discovered shouldn't turn an eye.

We live in a world with many imperfect people, and some really bad ones. That's no question. But I don't think being afraid to share and reducing the amount of personally identifiable information is the right approach. It makes more sense to assume the world is full of great people, cultivate the ones where this is known, and to be smart about what you share, and where you do. Watch the big networks to see if you think they are taking liberties with your data and prepare for the eventuality if they do.

OneTrueFan Reaches Second Base With New Site & Badges

My favorite and most useful browser extension in the world is OneTrueFan. The Web history tracker and sharing tool which launched at the end of September has been a must-install for me on any browser that I use (including Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Rockmelt) - letting me gauge my own Web usage history against my peers, share interesting stories to downstream social sites, and in a fun way, discover what sites my friends frequent that I don't, while also learning which sites we have a mutual affinity for. The site just revamped with a major refresh of its offering, helping to quickly surface user statistics, history, fanned sites, and like many services, earned badges.

OneTrueFan's data on my Web browsing history is exhaustive. Just as Blippy tracks my expenditures, and Foursquare tracks my check-ins from place to place, OneTrueFan shows the sites I visit, rewarding me with little alerts saying I've reached the "Level 2" patch on one site, or "earned the Second Base" patch on another. And as my own statistics are increasing, so to is the data on the sites themselves. OneTrueFan's latest Web revamp now clearly displays site leaderboards and activity streams for specific domains (Examples: Twitter and Google).

Three Individuals' OneTrueFan Statistics

While people once acted surprised at tracking people's habits in spending and traveling with the other services, it might seem curious why other friends' Web activity would be of interest to me. But I've been intrigued to see how much other people rely on tech and business publications more than I would have anticipated, or find lesser-known interests, as I find friends who view sports sites, play fantasy football, or share hobbies foreign to me.

One Of My Fanned Sites, Google, With My Stats

As a site owner (see this blog's OTF page), I can now see who else is a fan of the site, having accrued 20 points or more, and who is sharing content from the site. The resulting leaderboard is reminiscent of MyBlogLog, and it should be, as it shares a similar pedigree.

My Pied Piper Patches on OneTrueFan

Like Foursquare, some of the Patches earnable on OneTrueFan are not entirely clear as to their origin, but they will no doubt be in high demand from active users. I've somehow managed 23 "Pied Piper" patches, presumably from leading people back to a site, and 7 "Commitment" patches, which come from visiting a site for 30 consecutive days, or so I'm told. And I've gotten to Second Base with 89 separate domains. Cool, I think.

If you're not using OneTrueFan, I recommend in the strongest terms that you do. And if you're worried about privacy, just remember you can hide any activity you want at any time. Besides, there's always Incognito Mode. Find the new OneTrueFan at http://www.onetruefan.com.

Blippy Pumps Profiles With Personality, Adds Product Q&A

Blippy is going well beyond purchase records, and becoming an ecosystem of brands, products and consumers, essentially replicating a "product graph" much like Facebook's much-vaunted "social graph". This week, the company introduced the capability to ask public questions of product buyers, initiating discussion, and also added fun profile pages that users can customize to make especially personal - from new fonts to layout and links to external sites. While the site is becoming more immersive in terms of offering a more rich product-oriented experience, it is quietly and quickly becoming one of the more engaging and well designed communities on the Web. It's much more than double rainbow 404 pages and spaceships on the login page, so don't get distracted by omgwtf nail clipper giveaways, for there's real meat underneath the shiny package.

Like other good social stream sites, Blippy started with a clean and simple flow of updates, later adding on comments and reactions. Later, came product pages and the ability to write detailed reviews of your every purchase, all collected next to similar responses from other buyers on the network. The addition of the option to start discussions on brands and products in Blippy is a natural extension, one that seems more comfortable than forced Question and Answer sites dedicated for this purpose.

New to Blippy: "Ask" about products or brands to all customers.

Take, for example, my own simple question to Apple customers about whether they were fans of the brand primarily for the company's software or hardware. A someone who distinctly remembers the company near extinction, when it was said they should exit the hardware game, I wanted to see where people's loyalties lie. Unsurprisingly, my quick question, in a matter of minutes, had people praising their software, or saying the marriage of the two was what made them fans.

Customization of Blippy Profiles

On the profile side, while most profiles are remarkably inflexible, such as those on Facebook and Twitter (which at least lets you update the background), Blippy's new profiles allow significant customization. From the country club pimp look of Philip Kaplan to the friendly MizzBlaze or my more traditional approach, you can now change the background, add a profile picture, give your name a fancy font, and add links to your other landing places on the Web. It's pretty sharp. They call it "Fancy".

My Customized Blippy Profile

Pud's Customized Blippy Profile

Blippy is a lot more than boring paper receipts now. It's a lively community with a growing pool of reviews and the ability to launch questions should lead to interesting debate. Get your questions in and update your profile to be snazzy.

Blippy Gives Popular Brands Top Billing, Ramps Real-time

Since increasing the site's focus on purchase reviews and capturing all activity by specific brands within the network, Blippy's direction has been becoming increasingly clear - surfacing popular buys by brand, and showing the most popular stores across the entire purchase sharing site. Today, the site saw a significant revamp which brings the top brands to the front page, increasing discovery and even showing what is trending across each of these top companies.

As was noted when Apple introduced Ping to create something resembling a social network around your iTunes purchases and favorite artists, a good percentage of Blippy's shares originate on iTunes. Today, the company highlighted nearly twenty brands, including not just Apple and iTunes, but also Amazon, Ebay, Fandango, Gamefly, Groupon, Hulu, Netflix, Safeway, Sephora, Starbucks, Target, Threadless, Walmart, Woot and Zappos.

New Categories By Brand on the Left, With Realtime Entries on Top

Choosing a company shows all shares from the network across that brand. Of course, choosing Starbucks fills your browser with lattes, mochas and iced coffees, while Fandango finds how many folks used the site to see The Social Network. Sites like Amazon and Ebay are clearly more diversified.

Blippy borrows from Twitter in a number of ways with its new site. The first and most obvious is the "Trending in" function for each brand. Trending in Apple? The always exciting "Overnight Shipping Charge" and "Expedited Shipping Charge", while the book "Free" by Chris Anderson is trending in the Amazon category. Also a Twitter-like aspect? When new entries flow into your browser while you are on the site, you are told how many await you and get the option to "Click to Refresh" (just like on Twitter search and the old Twitter).

The Amazon Page on Blippy Pulls In Purchases from the Store

Staying the same on Blippy is the same focus on pulling in your purchases, writing reviews on your content, and being able to connect to friends to find out what they're buying. But the new store features show what's trending across the network and helps surface buying from people you don't yet know. And you still get the option to make comments, or ask them to "Tell you more". And if you really like a product, you can become a "Fan" of it. As you can tell, I'm a "Fan" of Blippy. It's an incredibly versatile sharing network - the final step after you've said you've liked something and then visited on Foursquare. It's the result of you truly taking an action with something that counts - your money. In early October, the site was said to be processing more than $500k in purchases each day.

You can find my Blippy stream here: http://blippy.com/louisgray.

Blippy Extends Purchasing Play With Levels, Product Fans

I've long extolled the virtues of Blippy, the social network centered around your purchases - from iTunes, Amazon.com and Zappos to credit cards or debit cards you register with the site. If I can share a purchase, I will put it on Blippy, where I can exchange ideas on products I like (or despise) with friends and other consumers. In fact, I've gotten so connected to Blippy, I almost am disappointed when I pay cash or wish I could push big purchases (like the new house or new minivan) to the site. Part of the reason for the stickiness of the site? More and more features which make Blippy more interactive - including leveling up and the ability to become a fan of purchased products.

Elements of social gaming are everywhere in the most popular applications and networks. As was told to me by a peer at one meeting this week, "if you have five boxes to fill, people will want to fill those boxes." Today, when reviewing some recent purchases on Blippy, I found a new notification saying I had reached level twelve, and was only a few more reviews away from reaching level thirteen. So I wrote more reviews.

Transitioning from Level 12 to 13 on Blippy

Thus far, it's not clear what benefit one gets for "leveling up" on Blippy. There's no public leaderboard, and my level is not listed on my personal profile - although you can see a raw count of the number of purchases and reviews, which play into the level count. One assumes that the level may someday be public, and if they go the Foursquare route, maybe it turns into badges or something of that sort. Either way, it continues the progress of Blippy becoming a strong reviews site, and a way to collect unfiltered feedback on products of all sorts.

I am a Fan of Shazam on Blippy

Another way Blippy is tapping into popular activities from other top social networks is through the introduction of fanning products. Like you can become a fan of something on Facebook (though they now call those Likes), you can become a fan of any product or service on Blippy - from big companies like Apple to iTunes apps like Mint.com and Redfin and Netflix movies, such as Pulp Fiction.

A Recent Review of Mine on Blippy

The data flowing into Blippy is going to become increasingly valuable as more people register, share purchases and review items. A product's fan page shows how many registered people on Blippy use it, and what other items they may also have purchased. It's not improbable that Blippy could also show the aggregate amount spent on the network for specific products and show whether this is increasing or decreasing over time. (Think of how much money flows into AT&T from the thousands of Blippy users who pay each month)

Like other tangential social networks, including Cliqset, Blippy is becoming extremely feature-rich, and if you're not already using it, you're missing out. You can find me at http://blippy.com/louisgray.

To Protect Me, Amazon Has Decided to Kill Me

For the amount of transparency I put online, combined with my preference to purchase things online wherever possible, I have to count myself lucky that nothing nefarious has ever happened to my data. I have never seen false orders on my behalf, been a victim of identity theft, had to cancel accounts and change passwords everywhere, cut up credit cards, or reverse charges due to anything related to my Web use, so far as I can recall. It's possible that winning streak came to an end this last week, thanks to a flag from Amazon, saying that my account had been suspended immediately, due to suspected fraudulent activity. Rather than take their good advice, I am instead hoping I can prove all is well, and the mistake lies with them. Foolhardy, I know, but worth a shot.

I have e-mail receipts of activity from shopping with Amazon.com spanning for more than a decade. Even though I don't use the site as much as I used to, no longer buying books (as I once did regularly) or CDs (long since replaced by iTunes, Spotify and others), the idea of the account getting zapped, and needing to start over with all-new personalization and buying history, seems odd. I am something of an Internet account packrat, and I like the consistency. And even if it seems naive, I still doubt somebody got enough data to make an order on my behalf - as no other account, anywhere, shows one micron of suspicion.

The odd behavior with Amazon started at the end of last month, I bet. When I moved across town, I changed the address associated with my VISA card. Later, I went to Amazon and changed it there as well, including on my Amazon Wish List, which I typically look at a mere once a year, just before Holidays.

A week later, on August 5th, I got an odd e-mail, which was so text-heavy and non-interesting I almost dismissed it as a phishing scam. Entitled "Account Closure: Please Read", the e-mail explained:

"After careful review of your account, we believe it may have been accessed and used by a third-party to place order(s) without your permission. It seems that someone obtained your personal account and/or financial information elsewhere, and used it on Amazon.com to access your account.

We have closed your Amazon.com account effective immediately because of this possible unauthorized account activity. If this recent account activity (HP Pavilion dv6-3010us 15.6-Inch Laptop) was authorized by you, please reply to this message as soon as possible and we will reactivate your account."

Anybody who knows me knows there is no way I would by an HP laptop. Not for me, not for a friend, not for anyone I actually cared about. So it's obvious something is amiss. After checking the message's details and ascertaining it really had come from Amazon.com, I tried to login to my account, and couldn't get through. It really had been closed after all!

Morbidly curious, I checked activity on the credit card associated with the account, and found nothing weird. Similarly, no other account had a hair of concern associated. Every notification from Blippy could be traced to myself or my wife, and Chase, ETrade and Wells Fargo all came back clean. This only reinforced my thought Amazon goofed somewhere. So I reached out this week to follow up, and there's still a ways to go to finding out the truth.

Amazon makes it hard to reach anybody by phone on their site. Clearly with their scale, they want to avoid inbound calls, if possible. To get there, you have to hit Help, find the Contact Us button, and "Sign In to Contact Us". Of course, I couldn't sign in. Duh. So I clicked to skip sign in and found another set of questions to fill out to describe my story. Again, thwarted by tech, I could only put about 100 characters of description to explain. Try that. It's harder than it sounds.

Needless to say, I made it through and the young woman on the line couldn't solve my issue. There's simply no account assigned the e-mail address any more. After a decade's time purchasing on Amazon with the same ID and having them know me as well as they do, I'm locked out.

I completely understand their wanting to protect me as a customer, and stop problems before they start, but something is amiss. If my credit card data were truly compromised, would I not see spending somewhere else? What do you think? Should I convince Amazon they screwed up and get my account on, or should I start canceling and changing passwords everywhere? Either way, whether it is their fault or not, I don't think I will be shopping at Amazon very often going forward. It's a result of unintended consequences.

Blippy Reviews are Crowdsourced Product Feedback Engine

Some of the original feedback on Blippy, the purchase sharing service that tracks your linked spending, said the service was about as exciting as reading old receipts. But as the service matures and gains new features, we are seeing the content expand, making the network a potentially vast repository for first-person reviews of brands, products or customer service. Just as Foursquare has learned, the simple act of a status update displaying one's location or item purchase is not enough to build a community or a company. Instead, it takes personality and emotionally-tinged feedback around that experience. For Foursquare, this content comes in through tips you can leave when you check in to a venue. For Blippy, this comes when you add a purchase and can describe what you bought, and whether you would recommend it to a friend. And if you see these reviews on Blippy, you can let the reviewer know what you thought of their update.

Hover Over the Unicorn and Discover It's Just a Man In a Unicorn Suit

Longer-term Blippy users have no doubt seen the frequent of a new mascot (a man in a unicorn costume) nagging them to review purchases. By heading to http://blippy.com/review/, one is prompted to "tell your story" quickly and move to your next purchase. From here, as with Foursquare, we can learn whether you loved that burger you chowed down, or whether you think you got ripped off by your cell phone provider. And you can see where this is going - massive user-driven feedback, accumulated by individual brands or products, to provide brands with subjective value, and to provide potential consumers with the same, either in aggregate, or from individual friends whose opinions you trust.

My quick review of a U-Haul purchase on Blippy.

The resulting short, public, review on Blippy.

As co-founder Philip Kaplan wrote me in an e-mail tonight after I pinged him regarding the updates, "The idea is to make it both easier for people to interact with each other, and have better "structured" data around which reviews are great, and why (funny/informative/weird/etc). We haven't used the data yet to make the site better, but it should be kind of awesome when we do."

This direction becomes even more clear when you see any specific brand's page within the entirety of the Blippy network. For example, when viewing the Best Buy page, you can "nudge" the 875 people who have entered updates from Best Buy on Blippy to write reviews of their experience. You can also nudge the more than 2,400 who downloaded the Foursquare app or the nearly 300 AT&T Mobile customers to do the same. Not unsurprisingly, companies like AT&T don't fare nearly as well as others, but when an entire community is pointing out issues with similar purchases, it can be used as a warning to future buyers within the network.

Someone Likes Your Blippy Review, Or So Says Your E-mail

Also new to Blippy of late is an amusing way to provide feedback to reviews. Rather than the "thumbs up/thumbs down" or +1 approach seen from many black and white feedback services, Blippy has stayed true to Kaplan's history and kept a humorous edge. One can click under any review to mark it as "awesome", "funny", "informative", "omgwtf", or simply ask to "tell me more". The simple action of clicking any of these options sends an e-mail to the reviewer to show somebody has interacted with their content, and bumps the review to the top of the network's reviewed items list, giving it another shot at people's eyeballs.

The move to highlight reviews is such a big deal for Blippy that only shared purchases with reviews show up on the service's home page. No longer will you see a stream of non-active updates (as is often the problem of real-time services like FriendFeed or Cliqset), but instead, your entire feed will be made from updates where users have taken the time to tell you more.

"We just launched this new design yesterday and expect to continually tweak the algorithm to show the best stuff on the homepage." Kaplan said. "Right now it's pretty simple -- the last review to be "acted upon" (commented, awesome'd, etc) shows up on top -- kinda like a message board where the thread with the most recent comment shows up first. But we may move to a more Digg-like feed, where the "most interesting" items show up first."

Whether it be due to the highly-visible security bug that hit a small number of accounts a few months ago, one met with rapid response, or due to "Yet Another Social Network" fatigue, talk amongst industry watchers says the site has had less traction than originally anticipated, considering its market leadership and feature set, but Kaplan correctly says that a "ton" of purchases have been shared, and "the numbers look great".

Site-wide data is now accumulated not just for brands, but users as well. For example, my Blippy profile highlights how often other users have tagged my reviews as "awesome" or "funny", and shows my engagement with the site, as the number of updates I've posted with reviews is shown alongside those without. No doubt the most engaged users who update their reviews more frequently with value can gain the visibility of the community and grow in stature.

So too can Blippy grow in stature if the site's newest features are adopted by users, driving promote greater utility, engagement and community. For me, the combination of Foursquare check-ins, followed by Blippy updates, and now reviews, gives people a full circle view into where I am going, where I am spending my money, and why I am making those choices. If Foursquare is the first step to say you have arrived, then Blippy is the next step to show what you did there. Blippy may be the less understood of the pair, but the latest additions bring it ever closer to a powerhouse of real responses to real actions. It's not just that I "like" something, but that I paid for it. Now I am even more likely to tell you why.

You can find me on Blippy at http://www.blippy.com/louisgray.

Why I Trust Blippy, Mint and Others With My Financial Data

In an up and down week for the startup, Blippy gained a huge amount of unwanted attention on Thursday and Friday as it was discovered that four (and eventually five) of the company's users saw their credit card numbers exposed, in full, through creative Google searches (since removed). As somebody who has registered my credit card and debit card with Blippy, you might think my knee-jerk reaction would be to pull out my data, but it's not, and I am just as supportive of the creative site for sharing transactions as I ever have been. I will continue to encourage people who want to share this activity to use the site, and I am not any more shy about putting my data into their product than I was before. Similarly, I will continue tracking all my data on Mint.com and other sites, because these companies and others like them, have proven themselves to be trustworthy and innovative - delivering me real value.

I joined Blippy in January largely because as I have been participating in and advocating sites that tell people what we like for years, Blippy takes the next step and tells people what we actually purchase, going beyond the "like". I have watched Blippy expand its social capabilities, as you can follow friends, have conversations on transactions, and see groupings of similar behavior, seeing who is buying from specific vendors, or even finding out if other friends are buying the same things you are.

My Credit Cards Go to Blippy Automatically. Zero Concerns.

Unlike some users of the site, I opted to go "All in" with Blippy, sharing not just my soft accounts, like Zappos and iTunes, with the service, but all my purchases. That means you see the boring fillups at Chevron on my debit card, my cash withdrawals from the ATM, and yes, even my wife's Teletubbies DVD rentals on Netflix for my kids to watch. I did this because for much of what I do, I am living life in public. I believe in sharing as much as possible, partly demonstrating that there is little to hide. And while some of my transactions are boring, that's just who I am.

When it was reported this week, by VentureBeat, who, from my understanding, worked on the story for a few days before issuing their initial story, that some cards were exposed, it was quickly shown to have been a limited bug, related to early beta users using a specific card from a specific bank - and was completely out of the ordinary. Blippy quickly responded to the issue, and worked publicly with Google to solve the issue, keeping all of us informed, if we were nervous. (I wasn't)

Mashable's Typical Approach to News Reported by Others

Meanwhile, you saw the typical tech press pile-on from people who had done no original research, flocking to the story like youths at a soccer game chasing a ball, as blood in the water can be exciting. But VentureBeat calmly and professionally kept the story updated, while the Blippy blog did the same, open and with considerate remorse.

There is a huge difference between making a mistake and being untrustworthy - and for me, putting my card data in Blippy is not dissimilar to putting my credit card data into Mint.com, having Intuit find my W-2 data come tax time, or entering my credit card information over and over and over from e-commerce site to e-commerce site. In order for Blippy and Mint.com and these other businesses to succeed, they need to ensure the safety of users' private data, and practically without exception, they have done so. The companies' success will come through their amassing a high number of users, and being able to report trend data based on groups and demographics, not on individuals - and thus, it is in their best interest to keep your data safe and secure.

Google Makes Their Role In Fixing the Issue Clear

ReadWriteWeb chronicled some of Blippy's response to the slip-up today, when they said what to do when a PR disaster strikes your startup. Blippy did the right thing by all accounts, apologizing, making full disclosure, and reporting how the issue was being addressed. Meanwhile, Google's Matt Cutts took to Twitter to explain what that company had done to fix the issue also. That's transparency and a closed loop response.

If I had more options to share even more data with Blippy, I would do it, and getting my e-mailed updates from Mint.com is among the highlights of this data-driven geek's week. It benefits the Web at large to get more real data about our purchases and activities public, and Blippy is one of those making the process interesting. I trust them with my information, and won't be changing a thing. You can find all my data here: http://blippy.com/louisgray.