Business owners now have a new social media tool to track what customers are buying and what they’re saying about the products-of course the rest of the world can see it too.

Blippy, which is only a few months old, allows users to share their spending habits by connecting credit card transactions to the website, Twitter and Facebook . They can also share deals, comment on their buying experience, quality of the product, make recommendations and even tell their friends not to buy it.

Here’s how the free website works:

• Sign up for Blippy by selecting a user name and uploading an image.
• Find, follow and invite your friends to follow you along with follow suggested friends.
• The site can be connected to your Twitter or Facebook account, but you have to allow access via submitting your password.
• Then you can link accounts including: eBay , Zappos , Apple’s iTunes , Netflix , etc. along with your credit cards and bank account.

• Blippy doesn’t require the user’s credit card number. You give your username and password that you use to access the account online.
• Whenever you make a purchase, it’s immediately posted for your friends to see and comment. For example they’d see something like ” pud spent $9.99 at iTunes .” (Pud is Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan).

• Users can hide certain purchases or stop sharing at any time.

So is this just another social media oversharing service, or should business take it seriously?

“This not only tells you what kind of things they’re actually into (rather than someone just saying they like something), but also other information like how cheap they are, as well as where they actually are at a given time. There is actually a lot of data tied into the transactions we make, and Blippy takes that and makes it social,” TechCrunch wrote in December when private beta testing began.

The site has gained nationwide exposure since launching in January, including on Time.com and Stephen Colbert’s “Colbert Nation .” Blippy users are streaming more than $1 million in purchases a week, Kaplan told BallywhoSocial .

“Businesses benefit from Blippy by the inherent ‘word-of-mouth marketing’ that happens when a Blippy user tells her friends that she bought something,” Kaplan said. “Many people discover new products on Blippy and end up buying them.”

The company is also “working on a way to highlight sellers, according to Blippy’s Twitter Account ( @blippy ). That could be great news for businesses, but how do you keep track of all that buyer data?

While Blippy’s popularity and longevity is still unknown, it is yet another form of social media that companies must monitor closely. Part of that plan must include establishing and implementing processes consistent with your brand in order to communicate effectively with customers posting both positive and negative feedback.

We want to know what you think. Would you use Blippy?

Technorati : Apple, Ballywho, Blippy, Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, Zappos, eBay, foursquare, iTunes, marketing, shopping, social media, social networks

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