Brightkite was one of the early players in the location-based social networking game, which is a space that is growing rapidly. Originally a TechStars startup, Brightkite was bought in April by Limbo and has been flying a bit under the radar as a fresh crop of location-based services have popped up including the new favorite, Foursquare.
A few weeks ago, the startup launched Brightkite 2.0 for the web, which was chock full of new and noteworthy features. Today, the much-awaited Brightkite 2.0 for the iPhone, which is free, hit the app store.
The app contains much of the same functionality has the new version of the web site. One of the main changes is the new friend model in the app. Brightkite friendships has been redesigned to let people “subscribe” to your public posts by becoming a fan, but only you decide who’s a friend. While fans have limited access, Friends get more access and privileges to your posts. Brightkite says it’s a way of taking the pressure of users who don’t want to deny an acquaintance access to see their posts.
The new version has also upgraded privacy settings and sharing options, to share with just friends or everyone. You can also share posts to Twitter and Facebook invididually and can post with out location included. And the app contains much of the new streaming filters that are included on the web, which allow customization of the people, locations, and type of posts you want to see. Other features include stats, which lets you see the number of views on your posts, popularity of a post, visitors to a place, and more. You can also rate other users’ posts with a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Brightkite is sooooo 2008.
Check out Sherpa on tmobile! Or called HHN on the iPhone. Great location based app, sooooo 2020! hehe
Nikidelic
This app was posted in the iPhone App Store 23 Sep 2009, a month ago.
Updated and opened it up yesterday for the first time in months. I feel like this service died on the vine when it could have iterated and added more local/social functionality (which foursquare & gowalla eventually did).
Hello,
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Saran
I dunno. It seems prety fail-y and “too late” to me.
Come one Tech Crunch, we expect good quality from your site, but this is not up to scratch. What’s up with the obvious mistakes ?
“The app contains much of the same functionality has the new version of the web site.”
“Brightkite says it’s a way of taking the pressure of users who don’t want to deny an acquaintance access to see their posts. ”
Get with it !
Today? 2.0 was out on the 24th. :-/
Donavon is right, I’m already on 2.1.
Leena, do you have money invested in Brightkite?
Because you are the only person who thinks Brightkite added new features in the upgrade. Their customer service board is filled with users complaining that the new privacy settings are less-featured — in fact, BK’s changes to their privacy system summarily made a lot of old private post public!
The Twitter & Facebook upgrade is a joke, too. Brightkite’s connections to other services (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Fire Eagle) haven’t been working correctly since the upgrade.
Also, Brightkite was down for five days after the upgrade. Way to miss a story, Techcrunch!
I have tried several times to engage with location based services but each time I have only ever been a borderline user. I rate the foursquare and Gowalla concept though and need to commit more to those networks purely for the rewards! And also as a Mayor I have the demands of the public to meet!
umm, yeah, I’ve had this for about a week or so… definitely isn’t “new” today.
Just from a design perspective : a glazed donut riding a skateboard, with a far from propotional leg extension (wait, donuts don’t have legs) in a pine forest ?
And oh, the twitter / facebook connect is pretty but it doesn’t work. I’d love to see from TechCrunch a play by play analysis of these “real time location based” apps. Not just these vacant upgrade reports (not to mention, does foursquare really merit such fanfare ?).