If I Owned BrightKite

Chris,

Not to be disrespectful, but your pundits stance is missing a very important point. Brightkite is a business. The cold hard fact is that these smaller mobile LBS startups must find short paths to revenue. I doubt that Yelp (who has of yet nailed a monetization strategy) is the way to go.

It is easy for you to sit back at your desk spurning Martin & Brady to find a way to use their tool to the betterment of society. I am sure they would be open to that if you would either:

1. Lead a series A for them and explain to the VC community why a business model is not necessary as yet
or
2. Hook them up with Google/Microsoft/Yahoo for an aquisition exit.

I think Martin and Brady are working very hard to survive in this climate. I also think they are very grateful for the press you are giving them. If you must give them feedback please do it in mind that our little startups need to find ways to make money otherwise we will all go hungry.
redg-

I’ve been on the fence about using BrightKite. I have an iPhone, and I see the app available for download, but I was unsure if it was worth a spot on my phone. Since you seem to enjoy it so much, perhaps I will check it out.

I’m a recent “so-so” fan of BrightKite. I’m running it on my iPod Touch and it seems to be working just fine with the exception of the occasional glitch when attempting to find my location. I’ve set it up to post to twitter, I think that’s one of Brightkite’s best features. During my daily travels I pretty much frequent the same routes & locations, so the whole “Check-In” thingy can be boring or redundant to others who might follow me. I find it more fun to only check-in when I’m somewhere I’ve never been, and sometime I’ll even add a photo. The whole community aspect of Brightkite is a stretch for me because very few people here in South San Jose, CA seems to be using this app. Commenting on or following other users movements 3000 miles away or even as little as 45 miles away is pointless. I guess this app needs more time to build out it’s user base in non-heavily populated area (unlike San Francisco CA).

Having unlimited access to GPS makes this app a must have for any iPhone owners but iPod Touch users are limited to searching for wifi hot spots just to check-in…it quickly become a chore. I plan on keeping it for occasional use.

great article, chris.

but what if you owned zhiing???

@Redg – perhaps you misunderstood. I love the product. I think it’s great. If I had loot, I’d buy it.

How to fund BrightKite or get it acquired? If I’m google, I don’t buy it because I can clone it poorly within a few months of buckled down work, and then I’d have it married to their already huge maps platform. So no.

Acquired by another company is much more likely, and if I were a media company, like Gannett or Hearst, I might give it a look as part of a larger content strategy.

Why did I write about the ways in which it can be used in a less-business-focused way? Because that’s how I’m using it right now. I’m not sure that there was anywhere on my blog that I intimated that I wanted to recommend how businesses get purchased. I’m in the human business, most especially the humans-talking-via-technology-business-in-meaningful-ways-business.

If it didn’t come through that I love what Martin and team have created, I’ve failed only in being clearer. I love the app with the iPhone UI on the front end. The web side? Not so much. The PREMISE of what this can do?

Kendall was right. I’m not talking about this as some other “find your friends” platform. This, to me, is a tool to annotate and bring a platform of floating data to location-aware browsers.

Regarding my pundit status, my goal is to turn our thoughts on their side and figure out new ways to approach things. I won’t be stopping that any time soon, company-agnostic.

I only just now downloaded the zhiing app because I’m evidently down the street from the company.

Will there be a glut of startups trying to crack the location/annotation code? Yes. Definitely.

I downloaded Brightkite a long time ago and decided it was too much trouble to check in everywhere, and too public (even for me) to list my home address. So I’m just a sporadic user.

@francine: You can (on the website) set a specific location (placemark) to be private, and any checkins/posts/comments that happen around that location (you can also set a radius) will automatically be set to private even if you are in public mode. So you would create a placemark with your home address and then set the privacy around that (as well as work or other places you only wanted friends to be able to see).

As a user one thing I really like about Brightkite is that they have thought very carefully about privacy and there are a lot of controls around this you can make use of.

Chris,

The mistake was mine. I should have centered in on one big issue I had with the post. Your ideas don’t realistically help BK survive… Delivering content for non-profits/smbs/people without a large war chest is fanciful. I agree mobile content delivery is a business strategy. I have the Report for juniper that states UGC is a 5 billion dollar business. I will also agree that one day this could be a valuable market place, and in a vacuum your idea is solid.

However we don’t live in a Vacuum. Brightkite doesn’t have the cash-flow to wait on your market “suggestions”. Loopt with their latest 13 million is attempting to raise another round because they can’t wait for this model either. Your “pundit” status is well deserved (seriously I’m not being sarcastic). I just think it would be a mistake at this time for these guys to listen to this “noise” of applying their product to the greater Social Media World for Good.

How bout a post that takes into consideration the real situation for Bkite. Guys you only have XXX in the bank, you don’t have enough to monetize two years from now, no VC is going to give you money with the product as-is today. Here’s three steps Chris Brogan would take to help calm that Ulcer in your stomachs and put coins in your coffers..

*note Your flattery of their product makes it all the more dangerous*
Brady Martin Focus on making money in the now fellas. Later on we can build something good for the people. Otherwise, save your code, close up shop, tell everyone to piss off, and all of us little startups can go live on an Island together called Deadpool…

@Redg I think what BrightKite is doing is spot on. Build a product people will love, with a solid API and community support. Worry about money now isn’t the end all. What is the end all, is what you suggest, screw the product make a cheap buck.

BrightKite has a very bright future. A very passionate small team has produced this amazing app, and will continue to make smart choices with their product (and yes, building a business is part of it).

Brightkite brings a new paradigm in the way we have interacted with webservices .. Search was/is big way we interact with webservices..

Brightkite changes that paradigm (Like Google maps) from a search paradigm to a “Around me” paradigm!

Imagine the possibilities if one can filter the results around us by what we want and whats available ..

Excited by the future ahead..

Yelp definitely needs some sort of decent mobile experience, so marrying its content w/ BrightKite’s location services would be great.

Be careful what you wish for re: a Google takeover. Just look at the wonders they have done for Jaiku.

The iPhone is not nearly the only mobile device out there. The first company that realizes that Nokia, Samsung, and LG are all making first-rate mobile devices with GPS, webkit enabled browsing, etc. and designs a decent mobile app for all these devices will topple its competition.

Oh, and does anyone else find it funny that Brightkite is unavailable at this time?

Yes, we think alike.
I’m trying to explore the possiblilties that social networking type sites have….
:-)
-Ronit

I prefer BrightKite to Twitter. To me Twitter is What are you thinking. Brightkite is Where are you, What are your doing and What are you thinking?

I prefer Zhiing because you don’t need to join a network or anything – it’s direct and simple. You can use it from your browser to send locations to yourself or someone else for a meet up. Alot of stuff to try in the app store but this is simple and direct.

I echo all your thoughts Chris, I had a similar “wow” moment about BrightKite a few months ago – it is an amazing platform and the iPhone app really shines. If I had the loot I’d go halves with you!

Chris, I've been using this for a while now and I get it…

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It is good!