May 26th, 2008 A few weeks ago I decided to give Brightkite a try, and had a mixed experience with it. What is Brightkite, you ask It’s another social-networking type service, very similar to Twitter and Pownce that focuses on small ‘micro-posts’ that your friends can subscribe to. One of the things that make Brightkite different is the fact that it focuses on your location, not just your friends. Using either the web or the mobile application, you can enter in where you are currently located, and see what folks around you are doing. For example, here is the ‘placemark’ for Times Square in NYC. One of the major plusses is the ability to quickly post a photo to the service, and say ‘this photo is from ________’. All too often, with a photo-equipped, email-enabled phone, you see something you want to photograph and share with your friends, and Brightkite definitely makes that possible.

Word is an iPhone application is on it’s way that will plug into the Google Maps triangulation feature iPhones have – that will make ‘checking in’ to locations, and posting geo-tagged photos a lot easier. I’d really be pleased if there were a way to post photos to Flickr automatically as well, but that may or may not be in the works. I think Brightkite is certainly a neat idea, especially if you make sure to apply the proper privacy settings (you can set levels of privacy based on whether you ‘trust’ a friend or not to know your exact location, just the city you’re in, or just to read the post you’ve made). Of course, the fact that most of my friends do not use this service make it’s usefulness a bit less than someone whose friends were the social-networked, mobile-app using types.

When it’s just you and maybe 2 or 3 other folks broadcasting their location and photos/posts from that area, it quickly loses steam. At least Brightkite allows you to also send your posts to Twitter when you make an update – that’s definitely a nice touch. While I really like the interface of Brightkite (much more than Twitter or Pownce), content is king.

As long as everyone I know is using Twitter, I can’t really justify moving over to another service just because it has a slightly nicer interface and offers some neat location-based stuff. What I really hope happens is that Twitter borrows some of the ideas from Brightkite and implements them (on an optional basis) into their service. Anyway, if you’re looking to give the service a try, either post a comment here or drop me a line and I can send you an invite.

Here’s my profile. Welcome! If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Thanks for visiting! Jim says: May 26th, 2008 at 12: 32 pm Seems like BrightKite is just for a few people. They are every stingy with their invites.

I’ve been trying for weeks, no luck. Daniel says: May 26th, 2008 at 4: 22 pm Invite sent! Leave a Reply Posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 10: 32 am and filed under Apple, Gadgets, Reviews.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.