Brightkite
June 16th, 2008
I am always on the lookout for new services that are in beta. They’re not difficult to find as everything that’s considered web 2.0 is in beta seemingly indefinitely. But I recently was sent an invite for Brightkite, a service that allows you to track your every movement. Sounds scary? That’s because it is.
The service looks daunting at first, and depending on how deep you get into it becomes almost overly complicated. However, the basic premise of the service is connecting with friends in the real world based on the places you frequent. An interesting idea, but falls flat when you realize you have no friends. Worse yet, when you realize all your friends wouldn’t be able to understand or consistently use the service.
After using Brightkite for 3 days, I’ve found it somewhat addicting and imperfect. Sure it’s still in beta and many of the issues I have, will, in the future be fixed. One thing I don’t think will be fixed is the ease of use. The first thing you do when you sign up with the service is check-in. All you have to do to check-in is enter your address either on the Brightkite website or through text message.
After checking in you can see who you know is in the area, how many people have checked-in in the area and even search for businesses to look up an address. Take for instance my first check-in was in Portland, OR. After checking into Portland OR I needed to check in to the Rose Garden Arena, but I didn’t know the address. All I had to do was text ?Rose Garden Arena and Brightkite texts me back the correct address for me to check in.
But why? Right? Why do I need to use Brightkite? I don’t, but it’s another way to let my friends know what I’m doing whether they are using the service or not. For now, my profile is private so all my addresses are not visible to those who are not my “trusted friends.” As more features and settings are included in the service, this could change and I hope it does.
I will be using the service extensively on my trip to Disneyland. I am in the middle of finding the longitude and latitudes for each of the attractions and restaurants in the park and making them placemarks within Brightkite. Then all I have to do is text @carantion cafe and it will identify my exact location within Disneyland.
Once phones come standard with GPS it will be nice to be able to press a button or text “check-in” and Brightkite would pull the coordinates and automatically check you in at your exact location. It’s certainly a feature that is possible, and one they could implement now and as phones catch up with the service, it will be readily available.
As for now, Brightkite is a promising service that needs to find some better footing. Location based social networks are great in theory, but requires a significant investment from the user to make work. While something like this is cool, Twitter could do as a good a job notifying friends of your location. The only advantage a service like Brightkite has is the cool Google Map feature on the website. The lasting question is, will I continue to use it? Yes, for now. It’s a type of service that can compliment Twitter nicely and I’m curious to see if it will be a useful trip report tool.
Tags: beta, brightkite, social network
