Brightkite: I May Not Have to Miss Fireball After All

Returning back home after Web 2.0 Expo, I felt bereft. No longer could I turn quickly to my trusty RAZR, send a Twitter message to @fireball, and find out where people were. It's a silly thing to want, but if you are making plans to go out, it's helpful to have, especially if you are trying to meet up somewhere.

When @smbeebe asked if anyone wanted an invite to Brightkite, a location-based social network currently in private beta, I jumped at it, hoping it would at least replace some of my longing for those five brief days of all but having a plug in my head.

Brightkite currently supports phones with service from AT&T, Sprint, Nextel, T-Mobile, Boost, Alltel, and Suncom. When you sign up, you provide Brightkite with your cell number and they text you a confirmation code. Simply enter it on the web site and you are ready to start using the service.

Brightkite allows you to set up the service to be as private or as public as you want. You can allow Fire Eagle to access the data, as well as crosspost to Twitter for ease of use as well as ensuring that every last person you know is aware of your location. It also allows you to complete hide checkins and posts, limit them to just the city, or post your exact location, and you can set each of those settings for everyone, friends, and trusted friends, allowing you multiple layers of privacy based on your preferences.

All notifications can be sent to and from Brightkite on the web as well as via SMS, and it can alert you when your friends post something or whenever you are near anyone else using the system. You can also see a list of the places you've been and set placemarks to easily repost locations you frequent.

Some may think of me as being back in the dark ages, but I don't use SMS on my phone. Between web access and IM capability, I've never seen the need for SMS, so I pay for any incoming or outgoing messages individually right now. I like that I can turn off the mobile notifications and check only on the web site, which is perfectly functional on my mobile. It also doesn't require that your phone have GPS capabilities, a nice touch for dinosaurs like me who are refusing to upgrade until a phone really offers something special (like a 3G iPhone). The interface timelines are similar to Twitter's, and allow you to select statuses from you and your friends, the area around you, and the public timeline (called the Brightkite Universe). On individual pages, you can view a stream, places, and friends.

The Twitter functionality is seamless as long as you have it set up in your profile, but as Stowe Boyd notes, it's annoying that it appends a link back to the Britekite status message on every crosspost to Twitter. Most of these services are already adding their names to everything from Twitter to FriendFeed, and if you've already seen it on Twitter, why do you need a link?

Brightkite also has built-in functionality for posting images along with your posts and location, which "marketers" discovered fairly quickly as a quick peek at the public timeline revealed:

Britekite is a service that might very well take off in areas like Silicon Valley, where everyone is constantly updating their location, but it remains to be seen if it will gain any sort of traction in areas like my hometown, where it would still be considered the height of rudeness to whip out your cell at a bar with friends to announce your location.

Right now, Brightkite is invite only, but we have invites for Profy readers. Just leave a comment using your real email address (you don't need to expose your email address in the comments and we won't spam you!) and I'll send one right out to you!