By Tom Ryan, Managing Editor, RetailWire

Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from one of RetailWire’s recent online discussions. Each business morning on RetailWire.com, retail industry execs get plugged in to the latest news and issues with key insights from a "BrainTrust" panel of retail industry experts.

Blippy.com is a social networking site that encourages people to see and discuss what their friends and others are buying on services such as iTunes, Netflix, eBay, Amazon, and more. They can even set it up to show purchases from credit cards. While some view this as yet another internet-intrusion on personal space, converts say they discover new products and deals while reaching friends.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Justine Ezarik, 25, said she bought an app that tracks sleep patterns after she saw a friend buy it on Blippy.

"A lot of people are skeptical. They feel like they are sharing so much online already," Ezarik said. "I just feel like this is the next thing to do."

The site's founders said millions are already readily sharing more opinions, whereabouts and photos on Facebook and Twitter that many initially felt overstepped boundaries.

By Laura Davis-Taylor, VP of Global Retail Strategy, Creative Realities, LLC

As more retailers embrace the concept of marketing at retail, an interesting phenomenon I’ve recently witnessed is that of old school media planners struggling to include the store as a media.  Invariably, the one place they get truly hung up is defining “reach” within the store.

Lets start with some media definitions. Wikipedia defines the word reach when associated with advertising as “a measure of the size of an audience”. GRP (short for Gross Rating Point) is how the industry measures reach by a specific media vehicle or schedule. And, the CPM is how they represent the cost to reach 1,000 people within that specific media vehicle.

Almost all traditional media is defined and measured this way, so it’s no surprise that people new to playing within stores inquire about a retailer’s in-store GRP and CPM. There are, however, some big issues with this approach.

Many factors have wreaked havoc on the traditional marketing world, causing brands to look at new outlets, new vehicles and new methods for connecting with busy, distracted people on the go. Lucky for us, the store was reevaluated as a consumer connection point and folks like P&G helped the industry see that it’s actually the richest place to create a relevant dialogue with that consumer. Given that a message received in-store is an active one, meaning that shoppers can respond with a buy immediately, it’s actually shocking that this was such big news. Regardless, it has legitimized the store as a healthy piece of the yearly marketing plan.