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"Today, purchase-sharing startup Swipely is opening its doors to the public after several months as an invitation-only site. \nThe service rivals Blippy in nature and allows users to automatically share purchases by linking their credit or debit card to their Swipely account, or letting the service grab purchase info from e-mail receipts.\nSwipely, which bills itself as \"an online service that turns purchases into conversations,\" is celebrating the public launch by introducing badges based on swipes and rewarding early badge earners with freebies including coffee, books and movies.\nMost web users will likely raise an eyebrow at the thought of attaching their credit card to a social media site for the purpose of sharing their purchases. Swipely Founder and CEO Angus Davis believes, however, that his online service is a natural extension of offline conversations that happen around purchases. Of course, he also candidly admits that Swipely's biggest challenge will be to communicate that message to consumers.\nIn practice, Swipely isn't as scary as it may sound. Those users who simply want to test the waters without handing over their credit card information can do so by importing email receipts instead; the limited experience is still a rich one. Still, Davis indicates that roughly one-third of Swipely members have opted to link a credit or debit card to their account. \nIn terms of features and on-site user experience, Swipely excels on the product review side of things with simple rating, commenting and sharing features, and a clean user interface that is easy to navigate. The service also includes support for geo-location \u2014 powered by Localeze \u2014 so swipes are tied to their specific business location. \nOn the business side of things, Swipely could help companies better understand the link between online product discussions and offline shopping habits. \"90% of money is still spent offline ... the credit card in your pocket offers a way to connect the two worlds,\" explains Davis.\nOn that front, users can eventually expect Swipely to team up with retailers to help them offer purchase-driven rewards. \nWith the public launch, the well-funded startup will now focus on growth and continue its mission to add value to every swipe.\n\n\n\n\n[img credit: swipely]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/08/18/swipely-launch/>