Distance To Here

By Joshua Wood distancetohere.com

Do you want to have fun? Save Money? Make Money? All of these things and more are the goal of Texas-based startup Blastoff, LLC. At first glance, Blastoff appears to be just another company looking for an easy share of a multi-million dollar online marketing industry. They will offer cash-back to members who shop through their network of online retailers, and a percentage of the sales generated by referrals also gets handed back up to the referrer. So when you invite your friends, and they shop online through Blastoff Network partners, not only do they get cash-back on every order, but so do you. But is Blastoff just another incentive-based marketing scheme, or is it something more? Being the skeptic that I am, I did not put much faith in the idea of a multi-level social network centered around online-shopping… But since I’m a member of Prepaid Legal, I have access to a preview-account of the Blastoff Network anyway – so I figured I would take a look.

The first thing that caught my attention aside from the awesome theme song (The Polyphonic Spree) was the Blastoff team. Blastoff CTO Doug Gray was Senior Director of Sabre Holdings, the company behind popular travel booking services like Travelocity and CheapTickets.com. As CTO of Travelocity, Gray was credited with engineering the first ever real-time online registration system. Hardly a lightweight. Other team members include William Rogers, Scott Berman, and Brett Berveridge (LetsTalk.com). So if Doug Gray could create a web site that integrates with all the major online travel and booking companies, maybe he could create a web site that integrates with major online retail. But what is integration?

When I click on to the Blastoff mall (the “shopping” area of the site), I am presented with a pretty decent number of online retailers, including Target, Kmart, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and of course, Travelocity. Each retailer is listed with the percent cash back that they are offering. Cash back offerings range from 1% to as high as 24% in a few rare cases. For the people that spend a lot of money online, I can imagine how numbers like that could add up.

Still, who is going to shop through a basically unknown and untested web site even if they could get 6% off their Starbucks fix? The thing that really seems to set this apart from similar offerings is that you don’t actually pay Blastoff a cent — the service is completely free. When you select the retailer you want to shop at, it takes you to their actual web site. Clicking on iTunes even opens the iTunes store. So basically you can type target.com into your browser, or you can click on target.com from Blastoff and save 2%. Shop at Barnes & Noble through Blastoff and save 4%. Starbucks is offering 6% cash back, and I’ll bet if you can buy gift cards online, they won’t know the difference if you mark yourself the recipient.

In addition to the discounted shopping features, Blastoff touts itself as the next generation social utility that brings the Internet together and puts the best content at your fingertips. It will integrate with all the trending social outlets including Facebook, and Twitter, and pulls in content from popular media sources like Hulu and YouTube. News, games, and other widget-style tools allow your to further customize your page to match your taste. Blastoff has a lot of room to grow as a social or content utility. Design-wise it’s slightly archaic, but then again it’s just getting started. Utility-aside, the true value lies in the discount shopping features.

So is Blastoff just another fad, or is it the real deal? It may be both, but since it’s absolutely free, I guess there’s not much to lose; and with the state of the economy, I’m betting that more than a few people will be happy to save a couple more bucks at Walmart.

Blastoff is scheduled to officially launch to the general public on October 12th, 2009. To kick-start the launch, Blastoff has partnered with Prepaid Legal Inc, offering PPL members a preview of Blastoff and an exclusive 2-week pre-launch window to invite their friends.

And yes, if you’re interested in an advance-invite, drop me a line or follow me and I’d be happy to let you know when they’ve opened up registration.

More Information

• Blastoff Network
• My Blastoff Profile (You can register here on the 26th of September, 2 weeks before the launch.)