With Swipely, your credit card can tell friends what you’re buying
After high school, Angus Davis skipped college for Silicon Valley, where he signed on at Netscape Communications as the Web browser’s youngest employee.
He and his former boss, Mike McCue, bailed out of Netscape in 1999 to start Tellme Networks, which helped users search for information using phones. They sold the company to Microsoft Corp. in 2007 for $800 million.
Last year when Davis left the world’s largest software maker, he was searching for another big idea. He found it in his wallet.
Davis runs Swipely, one of two Internet start-ups that let users link their credit or debit cards to their sites and share information about what they buy with their friends or the wider Web.
Each swipe, whether a user is going to a concert, buying a new outfit or trying a new restaurant, has the potential to start a conversation, yet that information was buried in credit card and bank statements, sometimes in indecipherable line items, Davis said.
“This piece of plastic can be such a powerful communication tool to tell your friends what you care about,” Davis, 32, said.
Swipely and Silicon Valley rival Blippy are betting that the surging popularity of social networking — connecting with friends and family online — will transform commerce the same way it has communication and content.
Davis’ reasoning: Already people are sharing their thoughts, photos and whereabouts, so why not their purchases? It’s not about how much money you spend (Swipely, unlike Blippy, does not include transaction amounts), but where you are spending it and what you are buying, he said.
The payoff is in giving and getting personal recommendations for products and places, saving money and having more fun, Davis said. Businesses can reach out directly to consumers and reward loyal customers, he added.
Online retail has largely been a search-driven business, with consumers going to Google or Amazon.com to find a product or service. That has begun to change as shopping sites attempt to help people find new products and good deals by tapping into their interests and friends or by cutting through the online clutter to offer a single good deal, as with Groupon, or an array of good deals, as with Gilt Groupe.
Swipely recently raised $7.5 million from the venture capital firms Greylock Partners and First Round Capital, as well as well-known angel investors including Valley veterans Ron Conway, Reid Hoffman, Keith Rabois and Chris Sacca. The company, based in Providence, R.I., has 12 employees, some former TellMe colleagues.
It’s unclear how much traction Swipely will get. The site, which Davis says has thousands of users in its private testing phase, won’t launch to the public until later this summer. The real test will be if it can persuade mainstream consumers to sign up. Right now users are mostly technology buffs who tend to be more experimental and less concerned with privacy and security.
Swipely on Thursday unveiled some new features. It has integrated with social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. It has created VIP lists and scoreboards so that consumers can compete to have the most swipes at their favorite hangouts. Another feature steers consumers to the cheapest gas stations.
Privacy watchdogs warn that social networking sites such as Blippy and Swipely give online voyeurs and data miners too intimate a window into people’s every move, putting them at risk for identity theft or intrusive marketing. Swipely and Blippy say they take significant steps to protect sensitive data.
Swipely and Blippy are wagering they can continue to shift consumer attitudes. Has social shopping’s time come?
“It remains to be seen,” Davis said.
