Brightkite is a rather new social networking website that adds a different element to the mix: geo-based networking. The idea is rather simple: you check into places and other people on Brightkite will be able to see your position and maybe network with you if you're in the same place or near them.

I've been using Brightkite for about a month now. At first, I was rather pleased with the idea of being able to tell everyone where I am. Especially since Brightkite can send your updates to Twitter. I meticulously started entering all the places I frequent and gave them names.

In reality, after a month, I hardly use Brightkite. There is no local support and I think I'm the only one in the Netherlands to have a Brightkite account. This means that checking into places is rather cumbersome. I have to send an e-mail from my mobile (no PDA at the moment) to brightkite. And this is where it gets annoying. When you send an e-mail, brightkite sends you a new e-mail asking you to confirm that you want to check in. Only, that mail takes about 5 minutes to arrive. I'm not going to keep polling for five minutes just to check in on Brightkite. On the whole, I rarely have time to confirm my check-in, so I just don't check in at all, anymore.

It's a shame because it could have been nice.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 00:55 and is filed under Selfish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.