Brightkite is a location-based social network.  I’ve been using Twitter for quite a while and read a few things about location based social networking.  The problem was I wasn’t too interested in SMS based implementations that a lot of these services use to tell the service where you are.  Sure you could use a laptop and “check-in” but you aren’t always around a laptop or even a computer.  I just don’t really care for the SMS based implementations because I’m not really sure what’s going on.  I send something and hope it gets there and I might get a notification.  I don’t have unlimited SMS messaging and it can get annoying if you have a lot of friends and notifications.

What got me interested in Brightkite was their iPhone application.  I looked at Loopt and even created an account, but never really used it.  It wasn’t quite enough for me to use instead of Twitter.  I’ve been using Ping.fm to update my social networks and Brightkite was one of the supported services.

I signed up for the beta testing and sent invites to a few friends.  I downloaded the iPhone application and setup a few placemarks in the system.  Brightkite uses the iPhones location service to find location and for the most part is pretty accurate.  At times I’ll search for the exact place I’m at and check in.  I then use Ping.fm to update at that location.  Brightkite also lets you post photos directly from the iPhone interface.  If you don’t have an iPhone you can send an email to the service with the photo from your phone, but again it’s not elegant to me.  It’s not as easy to use so when I’m on the go I’ll probably not use it.

The iPhone interface is really nice.  For the most part everything on the site is accessible through the iPhone app.  It’s nice to see that some services will give the same user experience in the mobile interface as their full blown website.

I think once the service leaves beta, if it can catch on with more users it will become a pretty nice service.  It will be cool to look at locations and see what people are currently doing there and also what’s happened.  I also see this as one example of the transition to a usable mobile platform.  Mobile applications will evolve and become easier to use.  They will offer a full service as opposed to partial service like a lot of platforms are now.  Some of the blame is because mobile platforms have traditionally been limited and some just because companies don’t allocate enough resources to this type of development.  I think the iPhone and Android will help alleviate some of the roadblocks with their SDKs.

So far I’m pretty happy with the service.  I would still like more friends to use it so I can get a more complete experience, but I’ll just have to wait and see if that happens or not.