Would Blippy Work in 2015? A 30x20 Debrief and Throwback Tribute
We started 30x20 as an experiment. Could we use public data and social pressure to change our spending habits? Or at least to give us more awareness about our relationship with money.
For me though, this was also my own version of Blippy 2.0. You see, early 2010 was the top-of-mind time for Blippy, and almost exactly five years has passed. Has anything changed? I was dying to know if something like Blippy was, as I suspected, “before its time.” Consumer tech cycles are about 4-5 years, so I felt like enough time had passed. For background: Blippy was a social platform where you would connect your credit cards and bank accounts, and it would automatically post what you were spending. Tech types fawned over it, specifically because it made people so uncomfortable. Like Chatroulette…it was that same “I can’t look away” kind of vibe.
Blippy never quite took off in the way that successful digital products do…and I always wondered why. I was a huge fan. It made perfect sense from an adoption perspective: the rate at which we were willing to share literally everything about ourselves unfolded and exploded with exponential force – our location, our photos, our entire professional history, our friends, our interests, etc.
Personal finance data is the laggard of the quantified self movement.
Money is still sacred. I’m not sure ANY progress has been made over the past five years around willingness to share on the consumer side, and it is with a bit of sadness that I should report that NO, I do not believe the time has come for Blippy or something similar.
This assumption was confirmed on the most micro level over the past 30 days via this experiment. Based on the IRL interactions I had over the past month, the reaction was *very* mixed. Those who understood 30x20 thought it was great, and others scowled with a mix of judgement and disgust. That’s cool though, I’ll take a little social vitriol for the sake of science.
This challenge DID effectively change my behavior in a way that I wasn’t expecting. And I think we’ll see over the next few years a spike in digital finance challenges…similar to healthcare, weight loss, and fitness, it’s a very habit-centric market with all the implications that come along with that. But the public/private dance is crucial. It’s a special kind of person that will willingly and openly share their purchasing habits. But you also can’t make it totally private (like a “Rise for Personal Finance”) because the social element is also crucial here. During the last 30 days, I would check this blog every day just to see what Kuan and Nick were buying to keep me in check.
I’d love to put together an ultra-simple app that is based on all the lessons from this challenge. Maybe one day.
As for the future of open finance data..it could be just a slow crawl. There are glimmers of hope like Glassdoor raising $70m (in 2015), but they pay incredible attention to anonymizing the data they have. And I’m sure there are other examples as well.
My main conclusion, at least for now, is that the taboo surrounding personal finance is still very palpable. I hope that soon it won’t be like that, and I am excited for that day.
Most importantly though, I am so glad we did this and I’d do it again in a second.