Brightkite – a location based social network

Location based social networking

During 2008, a lot of things fell in place for moving social networks to the next level. First of all, mobile Internet continued to evolve with higher data rates and lower prices on data transmission. Secondly, social network services became much more mainstream with Facebook becoming a juggernaut and services like Twitter gaining a lot of notice. And thirdly new mobile devices like the iPhone, the new Blackberrys and several models from Nokia, SonyEricsson, Samsung, LG and others added features such as large screens, improved text input and GPS to bring new powerful devices ideally suited for social networking while mobile. Brightkite have capitalized on all these trends and is set to deliver a quite compelling service.

Brightkite - Social Networking based on location

Brightkite focuses on the concept of checking in to places. You check in to a location, and then you can post text messages or pictures which will become associated with that particular location. As a user, you can view your friend’s activities in your stream, or you can view activities related to a particular location. A very nice view is also the map view that shows your friends locations on a map.

Brightkite on iphone

You can access Brightkite from the web and from mobile devices. It has a very good wap page accessible from all cell phones with a wap browser and you can use SMS both to get notifications and to do checkins and post messages. You can also send emails with pictures and posts and commands the same way as with SMS. But where Brightkite really shines is with the iPhone application. Here the benefit of mobility, GPS and mobile data becomes obvious. Using the GPS to determine your position gives a new dimension to the service and the possibility to send pictures and posts right at the present location gives a whole new experience to social networking. Of course this also opens up entirely new possibilities to interact with your friends and (if you have chosen to share your location with everyone) to meet new people.

Most people are active on several social networks and Brightkite provides possibilities to link your account to other services such as Twitter, Facebook, Fire eagle and Flickr. More services are added  continuously.

A very valid question pops up in conjunction with location base services. “What about security, I don’t want everyone to know where I am.” Brightkite solves this in a very elegant way, you specify your security settings for three different types: Trusted friends, Friends and everyone else. For each category you can specify if you want to show your position exactly, in which city or hidden and you specify this for both check-ins and posts. This gives you a very flexible way to specify how much information you want to share.

Brightkite is part of a new wave of social networking services on the Internet that takes social networking to a new level. The combination of micro blogging, photo posting and location based check ins provide a very compelling package that can be highly addictive.

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