Introduction
You never have to look to far these days when it comes to social media; it is not a new concept having been around for a while now. The explosion of social networking sites and application usage in recent years has been truly amazing. You will no doubt experience or touch social media in your day to day life whether you like it or not.
Having worked on a few projects in the retail sector I always find it very exciting to see how far organizations are pushing the experiences for users. Concepts such as cross sells, 360 degree product views, extremely high definition images and swatch colour / texture options. Bringing it back to the social media aspect we see many sites today allowing customers to review products giving feedback and ratings. To quote Albert Einstein “The only source of knowledge is experience”; I know before I spend my hard pennies I would rather get the experience and confidence from others before the hassle of hitting the returns department.
This brings me to a concept I came across when browsing for a social media application that combined the popularity of micro blogging and customer reviews. I found a concept more commonly known as “micro-reviewing”. Even more excitingly I found a community that integrates with your existing social accounts and is already gaining popularity.
Blippr
Blippr is a micro review site allowing users in a twitteresque manner submit reviews against products (currently covers music, books, games and applications). A user has an another feature in the form of a rating that goes along side the micro-review specifying whether you “Love”, “Like”, “Hate” or “Dislike” the product in question. Additional to this the site will recommend certain products based on your previous ratings that you may be interested in.
Blog Series Preview
In this blog series we will cover firstly how you we can harness Blippr easily into your Microsoft .NET applications with a newly created LINQ provider (Linq To Blippr). Secondly in this series I will touch on developing a Blippr mobile application for the recently announced Windows 7 Mobile Phone platform. We will then round off the series with developing a Blippr mobile application on both the Android and iPhone platforms using the amazing Titanium software.
To you give you a taste of what we are hoping to achieve at the end of this blog series below are some draft prototypes for the windows mobile application. All code will be open source and freely available to download.
![clip_image002[7]](http://consultingblogs.emc.com/blogs/jonsharratt/clip_image0027_thumb_625E3108.jpg "clip_image002[7]")
![clip_image004[7]](http://consultingblogs.emc.com/blogs/jonsharratt/clip_image0047_thumb_56C873C9.jpg "clip_image004[7]")
![clip_image006[7]](http://consultingblogs.emc.com/blogs/jonsharratt/clip_image0067_thumb_5251F302.jpg "clip_image006[7]")
Feedback and Comments
I welcome any comments either about the blog content itself or suggestions in steering what you would like covered in the coming posts. You can leave a comment on my blog, drop me a mail or tweet me @jsharratt.
Blippr Blog Series
- Blippr Series Part 1 - Introduction
- Blippr Series Part 2 - Linq To Blippr
- Blippr Series Part 3 - Windows 7 Mobile Blippr Application
- Blippr Series Part 4 - Titanium Mobile Blippr Application