Brightkite: A bright future for mobile social networking?
"Do you have a Brightkite invite yet?"
I was asked that question at least three times at last month's Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, one of those gatherings where an invitation to the latest private-beta social network is a coveted status symbol. And at this iteration of the Web 2.0 Expo, the private beta of choice was Brightkite, a Denver-based start-up that uses both a Web interface and SMS text-messaging to log your location and broadcast it to your friends. It's a lot like a more feature-intensive version of Dodgeball, a mobile networking site that debuted in 2004 and was eventually acquired by Google before quietly fading into has-been status.
Since the demise of Dodgeball, location-based mobile networking is something that at least a dozen start-ups, not to mention big Valley projects like Yahoo's OneConnect and Fire Eagle, have tried to master. Nobody's been able to make it work, but they're going to keep trying: social networking on mobile phones still hasn't taken off beyond basic messaging, and it really won't until some company nails location awareness.
Brightkite, the latest to jump in the where-you-at pool, is slick, functional, and promising, but there are still plenty of issues. In fact, they're issues that the whole location-based networking industry has to consider.
Should it be open to everyone, even sacrificing features in the process?
"We've been working on (Brightkite) for just about over a year," founder Martin May, who has a background in local-search start-ups, told me in an interview. The end result, he said, is a location-based social network that anyone can use. Much like Dodgeball, Brightkite users utilize a number of SMS codes to send updates--addresses or business names--to the service. There are far more options than Dodgeball offers.
But when it comes to the mobile industry in the U.S., there's still a massive technology divide between the low and high ends of the market.
"Access to everyone" means that Brightkite's features are relatively simple: introduce a single crucial feature that isn't compatible with the cell phones that carriers give away for free, and it's immediately restricted. So it has to rely primarily on the most basic of cell phone functions: manual text-message updates. "Checking in" on Brightkite, like Dodgeball, requires forming a new texting habit, and not every bar-hopper is going to remember to keep updating his location into the early-morning hours. And because it offers more options than Dodgeball, there are more text-messaging codes to remember.
It's an approach opposite to that of Loopt, arguably the most talked-about location-based service since Dodgeball, which is restricted to compatible phones and participating carriers.
"If you look at the services where people have had to manually enter location and update them as they move around, they have not really taken off," Loopt co-founder Sam Altman said in an interview with CNET News.com, hinting at Dodgeball. "To deliver the best experience, you know, live location, you've got to be able to partner with carriers in the U.S." The Loopt offering that Altman calls "live location" requires no manual updates and can automatically sense location through GPS technology. Several other location-based networking companies, like ULocate's Where.com software, also rely on GPS technology that not all cell phones have.
Brightkite's May argued that it's not worth restricting the user base in order to enable a slicker experience. "We believed from the get-go that if you're going to build a location-based social network, a social network means that all of your friends can be on it, and not just your friends that have really fancy devices or that are on a certain carrier." Besides, he said, the company has other restrictive features: "You actually have to pay for Loopt."
Juggling the techies and the Luddites
Despite having been founded in 2005, Loopt remains restricted to Sprint and Boost Mobile as well as to select devices like GPS-enabled BlackBerrys. This will change soon, Altman explained, as more developer-friendly mobile software becomes available--the
iPhone's software developer kit (SDK), for example, or Google's upcoming Android open-source software. May said that Brightkite hopes to take advantage of the same initiatives, with an iPhone application coming in June and more on the way.
"We want everybody to be able to use (Brightkite) whether they have a phone with GPS or not," May explained. "That being said, of course we wanted to make it easier for people to check in, and GPS and triangulation are the way to go." For Brightkite, this will mean that users with fancy handsets like iPhones and Android-enabled devices will have the bonus ability to download an application and hit a "locate me" button to set their coordinates rather than relying on text-messaging.
"To try to do this without access to live location just doesn't work," Loopt's Altman said. "At least no one's cracked that nut yet." With iPhone and Android applications, Brightkite could ideally handle both openness and "live location"--or, in other words, have its cake and eat it too.
What's more annoying: too many messages, or too many user controls?
But an everyone-can-use-it service is inherently susceptible to the same kind of overload that people bring up when they gripe about micro-blogging service Twitter and even social behemoth Facebook: too much noise and information you just don't need. Dodgeball dealt with this by restricting its reach to major cities and only sending you text-message updates from your friends in the same city, but the only way to silence an annoying user or opt not to send them your whereabouts was to block updates entirely. The "I don't want to know everything about everyone" barrier might have been what doomed Dodgeball; it has also prevented Twitter's entry into the mainstream. Brightkite may have the same issue.
But Brightkite thankfully has far more extensive user controls, a plus for members with low thresholds for annoyance or with concerns about privacy. You can opt to have your updates sent to all your friends or just a select "trusted friends" list, and for each of your contacts you can choose whether you want text-message updates, e-mail updates, or neither. That said, manually picking and choosing privacy controls for individual contacts can be a hassle, as some Facebook members learned when the social network gave them the option to organize their friends into groups and set individual privacy controls.
Those concerned about information overload are likely also concerned about identity overload: exactly how many social networks can we join before we there are just too many. Brightkite has an admirable strategy of aiming to complement, not replace existing social networks, but currently that's restricted to pinging Twitter with your location along with a link to a map, as well as a tie-in with Yahoo's nascent Fire Eagle. It doesn't yet connect to, say, Facebook status messages, nor does it pull in external data like Yelp reviews or geotagged Flickr photos. If any new social network is going to fit into this social-media-saturated world, it can't just complement the other services; it has to prove that it can make them more useful.
Now checking in on Brightkite: Virtual tumbleweeds
But all of those issues are rendered moot if nobody uses the service, which could be the toughest problem for a start-up like Brightkite, as well as a more established service like Loopt as it expands beyond Sprint and Boost. Only a quarter of my Brightkite contacts have posted "check-ins" in the past 24 hours, and no other members have checked into my New York neighborhood recently. Martin May described Brightkite as very "micro-local," but there just isn't much going on in my "micro-locale."
Successful social-networking sites rely on a core group of early users to give the site a "presence" before going mainstream: MySpace had indie bands, Facebook had Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard classmates, and Twitter had the Valley geeks who remain its most loyal followers. Brightkite doesn't have that grassroots crowd yet. It's a sign that a tightly restricted private beta phase--while helping to keep server stability under control--isn't the best strategy for a service where users will abandon ship if they don't see extensive activity around them.
Or Brightkite's issue could be, ironically, location. The Internet might make anything accessible from anywhere. But for a local-focused site, it helps to have a "home base" where things can start growing. And being in Denver, Brightkite is physically distant from the tech industry's most reliable petri dishes: the Bay Area crowd that sustained Twitter in its early days, as well as the New York new-media set that formed the heart of Dodgeball, which started as an NYU graduate thesis project. And Brightkite, unfortunately, emerged around the business-like Web 2.0 Expo rather than the more party-friendly South by Southwest Interactive Festival, which saw Twitter rise to fame in March 2007 when festival attendees wanted to know what everyone else was doing.
But May said that he believes prospective Brightkite users will see the utility in the site he created, regardless of the challenges that face the industry.
"The main focus of our service is to be able to bring people together around the places that they go to," he said.
And, May hopes, that's something they'll actually want to do.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Where I don't agree with Loopt (and Helio) is their belief that LBS should be limited to service contracts. Like your "virtual tumbleweeds" comment pointed out, the subscriber-based model just does not work for the cell-phone masses when everyone is operating on different phones, different subscription services, different carriers, et al.
IMO the better social GPS application will follow Loopt's "always on" model, but it would do so in a free downloadable and/or browser based format. A tie-it to Google Maps with searchable locations + real-time people finding would set the stage for explosive growth. This base platform would then drive additional uses like proximity detection, dating scenarios, location advertising, social congregation points, et al.
Brightkite's checking in feature seems to make more sense. I don't really care about the physical location (lat/long coordinates) of my friends, I care where they are. I want to know that they are at crifdog not somewhere on st marks btw 1st and A. (But maybe that is just me)
One thing that I wonder about is whether there is a one size fits all solution for mobile social networks. Does something that works for New Yorkers also make sense in LA?
On Brightkite : http://brightkite.com/people/bpende
On Twitter : http://twitter.com/bpende
On Pownce : http://pownce.com/bpende
On Jaiku : http://wholelotofnonsense.jaiku.com
http://twitter.com/sigepjedi | http://brightkite.com/people/sigepjedi
I also use it to keep connected with my friends whether in Seattle, San Francisco, LA, or Canada. Having a combination of their BrightKite photos and Twitter tweets throughout the day really helps me to keep up to date with them even if there is great distance. It's also of course great to find out about last minute movies or parties and the address is readily available (I wish I could easily add the address to my GPS, but that's another matter...)
An interesting way that BrightKite was used recently was at Coachella...Brady created Placemarks for each stage so you could track which bands your friends were going to and try and meetup. The Placemarks in general are really easy..I just create ones for @home, @work etc. and its a simple command to check-in.
I have been pleasantly surprised with the exceptional response rate that Martin and Brady from Brightkite have afforded me and the BrightKite community...I feel that they care about their customers and are quite agile in releasing new features.
So overall I give BrightKite two thumbs up and I look forward to more featurse and the mobile browser interface (& GPS location service would be good too :) )
http://brightkite.com/people/tarabrown
-Tara
Loopt is excluding people. I think you should talk more about how they're going to survive? They're dead out of the box. Brightkite is building a foundation in which anyone with a mobile phone can participate in. Who's to say they won't build on to that?
Just like an upscale restauraunt doesn't cater to the meat-and-potatoes-going-to-McDonald's-on-Saturday-night crowd doesn't mean they aren't going to be a success, brightkite doesn't have to be everything to everyone. It's called a niche.
I think you'll regret this article when it's all said and done.
Now that doesn't mean I constantly see people I don't know checking in to places near me as the service is still in beta so most people on Brightkite thus far I already know on Twitter as that is the primary channel that invites are being distributed through.
As for having to remember complex codes I call shenanigans, if you have predefined placemarks set up then you can check in to those using the @ symbol so I can do @home, @work & @park and it will check me in, the only other "code" you really need to remember is ?business name, so if you don't have a placemark defined you can find that business then it will text you back a list of options where you just reply with the appropriate number. Isn't that pretty simple?
One of the best things about BrightKite though is their support and their involvement with users on Twitter, every suggestion, question, bug etc I have sent has been addressed fairly promptly and I often see them replying to others.
Google can't figure out Dodgeball. Groovr's audience is dead.
Brightkite seems like a bright idea, but people have to use it. The nice iPhone UI will make it a successful social medium. The ease of use on the website will also help them.
But the private beta is kinda iffy. I like how when I run out of invites, I get more. I always say to people "Twitter is the what, Brightkite is the where".
I am going to visit my mom for her birthday tomorrow, and I am gonna explain Brightkite to her. She probably won't get it at first, but I'm excited to show it to her.
Also, i agree with your Groovr point, and its sad it didnt get more of a following. I think they just missed the mark in trying to be too grey of a combination of a few things when they should have just focues on a simple version of one thing they could be good at.
http://twitter.com/sigepjedi
There is great potential with this app or apps like it, just like twitter, some commentary thought twitter was useless until the user base disabled the ability to claim its uselessness.
I'm a big fan of the service already, but networks like Brightkite don't explode overnight even if they open the doors wide to the public from the get-go.
Give Brightkite some time to build a private community, stabilize its services, and open its doors to the public. Then maybe it'll be time to take a more serious look at the service's prospects.
2. Brightkite definitely has a grass roots user base. I have 8+ people in my area, and I live in a suburban area of Wisconsin. There is constantly activity with people checking in and posting notes and photos. In fact, if I chose to display check ins in my friend stream, I would quickly get overloaded since people are doing it so often.
3. Brightkite definitely faceses some adoption issues with people learning to integrate it into their lives. But sending a text message certainly isn't something that is a foreign concept to todays generation. I think any micro-blogging service fill face these challenges. In my opinion, Brightkite has a leg up in that it is very obvious what the service is about. I invited my brother to join, and he is very anti-Web 2.0. He never understands the services. When he tried it out though, he instantly liked it and said he wants to integrate it into his life.
4. While I think you raised some legitimate concerns, I believe they are largely unfounded. Brightkite is still so new (it seems they have really only opened up the private beta in the last two weeks or so) and they have not yet had their breakthrough moment. As a user and a part of thier growing community, I am convinced that they will have that breakthrough very soon.
- by basraw May 7, 2008 2:57 PM PDT
- where'd my comments go
- Like this Reply to this comment
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