2. 外语
  3. If you want to know how I spend my money, go to Blippy.com. Each time I make a purchase on my credit card, the amount I’ve spent

If you want to know how I spend my money, go to Blippy.com. Each time I make a purchase on my credit card, the amount I’ve spent

admin2014-01-07  29
问题     If you want to know how I spend my money, go to Blippy.com. Each time I make a purchase on my credit card, the amount I’ve spent and the name of the place I’ve spent it automatically pop up on this weird new site. Why would any sane person volunteer to publicize that information? Philip Kaplan, a technology entrepreneur and one of Blippy’s co-founders, hazards a guess: "To tell people—friends, acquaintances, maybe even strangers—a little bit more about you."
    I had a different theory. If large numbers of people could see and comment on what I was buying, maybe I would be shamed into spending less. Could there be a practical use for the exhibitionism and groupthink of social networking? Location-centric sites like Foursquare encourage people to blast where they are and what they’re buying. But Blippy takes things to a new level, since information goes straight from point of purchase to website. You don’t have to push a single button; just agree to let Blippy broadcast the details that end up on your credit-card statement. Marketers are constantly mining all sorts of consumer data, and Blippy— which has received seed money from big-name investors like Sequoia Capital and Twitter CEO Evan Williams—wants to help individuals start harnessing this kind of information too.
    Conversations on Blippy occasionally revolve around how people should spend less for things. If you pay more than $29.99 a month for a gym membership, expect to hear about it. But more often the comments are pro-purchase. That’s especially true when people choose to specify what they’re buying on sites such as Amazon, iTunes and Netflix.
    During my first month on Blippy, which was in beta(测试)until Jan. 14, my inclination for eating at Mexican restaurants quickly became a topic of conversation among the strangers who started following me on the site. As I scrolled through other users’ purchases, I was reminded that most people sometimes go to grocery stores instead of eating out every night. I noticed another Blippy member joking about how often charges showed up from a particular bar. He said that to avoid the appearance of a drinking problem, maybe he should switch to cash.
    I ran my cost-control theory by Kaplan, and he said it was interesting—but that he had witnessed his spending habits being swayed in the other direction. On a recent trip to Bali, he battled with a friend over who would get to pay for dinner. He wasn’t being gracious. He simply wanted the Blippy community to see that he was in a cool place.
    I, too, eventually found that sharing details about what I was buying only made me want to spend more. With friends on New Year’s Eve, I asked to be the one to purchase a bottle of champagne. In an odd way, I felt I would be ringing in the New Year with my Blippy peers. And that made me realize Blippy isn’t primarily about spending habits. Like any other social-networking site, it’s mostly about feeling as if you’re surrounded by a particular group of people even when you’re not.
The author believes that the most essential role played by Blippy is in the aspect of
选项 A、socializing with others.
B、cultivating wise consumers.
C、publicizing spending information.
D、changing spending habits.
答案A
解析 全文最后一句提到Blippy与其他“社交网站”没什么不同，都是让人觉得自己被一群特定的人围绕、关注着，当中，故A“与其他人交往”符合文意。全文倒数第2句表明作者领悟到Blippy的首要功能并不在于改变spending habits，因此，与“消费”、“花费”有关的B和D均不符合文意；C“公开自己的消费信息”只是为获得别人的关注的手段，并非目的，故C也不正确。
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