MarCom Professional

To Blip or not to Blip?

There's been quite a bit of buzz about Blip.fm recently. For those of you who don't know, Blip.fm is "a music sharing site where you post short messages (blips) with a track attached. The timeline builds up a story accompanied by music documenting your friends’ day. You play the timeline and have music on all day selected by your friends." (Hat tip: Becky McMichael)

You can even upload your own music and give people "props" if you enjoy a particular song they've blipped. You can also share your music on other sites, such as Last.fm and Twitter (check their FAQ to find out more). It's a great site which I'm sure - as more people join - will become an alternative, if not a direct competitor, to Last.fm.

But the ability to share what you're listening to on other sites - normally a definite plus point for emerging services - may actually threaten the success of Blip.fm. Some people have taken to cross-posting every single one of their blips to Twitter, meaning that some people's Twitter streams end up covered with muscial notes and Tinyurls to someone's Blip.fm stream.

This has annoyed a lot of people on Twitter, most notably Bobbie Johnson:

Sorry people - the bliprage has hit me. Please, no more ♫♪ LISTEN TO MY STATION ON ****.FM!!!!! ♪♪

(Good luck with the move to San Francisco by the way Bobbie - hope it all goes well!)

The reason it annoys people? Tweeting every single one of your blips is spam. Twitter is a platform for conversations, for useful links and for interesting thoughts. Unfortunately, the majority of blips don't fall into any of these categories.

Blip.fm operates just like Twitter, meaning that you can follow other "DJs" and they can follow you back. You can also do @ replies, so you can get a conversation going with any contacts you make on there. The only reason that some people aren't using Blip.fm like Twitter is that the audience isn't there yet. No one is listening to what you have to say on Blip.fm, but by cross-posting to Twitter you instantly gain a much bigger audience.

But, unfortunately, the people who tweet every blip will find that their audience on Twitter will decrease - I've stopped following at least 3 people because of their blip spam.

It's an interesting example of where cross posting can go wrong and I'm sure (and hope) that Blip.fm won't fail because of this.

What are your thoughts on Blip.fm? A good service or do you still favour Last.fm? Do you tweet your blips?

If you fancy finding out about the music I listen to, you can add me as a favourite DJ at blip.fm/benrmatthews. I promise I won't spam you with 80s glam rock!

Also posted on puddingrelations.blogspot.com