blipprmashableSocial Media oriented tech blog Mashable have just announced the acquisition of micro-review service Blippr.

We reviewed Blippr back in July of last year, the service lets people reviews applications, books, games, movies and music in 160 characters or less. Mashable have already taken steps to integrate the service into Mashable.com by placing small face icons alongside mentions of services in their posts – a great way to drive traffic to the newly acquired service.

This is one of a number of new changes founder Pete Cashmore and his team have begun to roll out. Along with some design tune ups, Social Media Comments and an attempt at social advertising with Twitter Brand Sponsors – Cashmore seems keen on taking Mashable social media element to a different level.

This is in fact the second acquisition from a member of the Mashable team. The first came on the 14th March (almost exactly a year ago) where Adam Ostrow, Mashable’s Editor in Chief, acquired ReadBurner, a service that tracks the most shared stories via Google Reader.

Blippr as a service has a fair bit going for it, with a strong community and a relatively simple concept to boot, I can see the long term potential. The current integration of the service with Mashable rocks too, and clearly from an “apps” perspective, it’s an ingenious way to collect user feedback.

Techcrunch are the only other blog (that I’m aware of) to have acquired a web service. Arrington and his team acquired InviteShare back in 2007 but unfortunately that seems to have been the peak of it’s popularity.

Congratulations to Pete and the rest of the Mashable team.