Thoughts on Brightkite 2.0
We all witnessed Brightkite’s 2.0 update at the end of September. The site was down for at least a day or so, and some users weren’t happy. Most users understood the scale of the update and were patient.
Once the site came back up it was only up for a few hours before they took it down again to fix some bugs.
A week later it happened all over again and was down for a few days. I can only imagine the stress at Brightkite HQ to get it back up again.
Before I go any further: I love Brightkite. I’ve been using it since it was in beta. It fits very well in to my workflow, and I especially love it’s location-based goodness.
Brightkite 2.0 eventually launched and the majority of users love the new UI and features — myself included.
I had been waiting for a long time for the new Brightkite iPhone application which I heard about soon after the launch of iPhone OS 3.0. It was said to include in-app maps; no longer would tapping on a map in the Brightkite application take you out of the application and in to the native Google Maps application on the iPhone. I’ll discuss the iPhone app more in a moment.
I looked at new and changed features of the website, and tested it all out. There were a few buttons that moved to a different part of the UI. This threw me off at first, but I soon changed my habits.
If you don’t know me, I am quite OCD. I became frustrated when I recently discovered I could not check in to a set of GPS coordinates via the website. I love the fact that I can check in to places such as Pancakes On The Rocks or even just a suburb. Though, if I’m on the approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge and I want to check in right there, I can’t — I used to be able to do this (on the website and the iPhone app).
I use Brightkite mostly for posting mobile photos. When I can’t check in to a location where I took a photo, then my entire photostream is brought to a halt. I need to check in to the location where I took the photo before I can continue uploading the next photos I took — in order.
I upload my photos from my iPhone via PixelPipe (full-size photo/video distribution service; iPhone app). It uploads my photos with a title, description, and tags to an array of websites, including Brightkite. At the moment the PixelPipe-to-Brightkite functionality does not work because Brightkite updated their API with 2.0 and PixelPipe hasn’t made a change to accommodate this. They are working on it though.
Yes, I love Brightkite. But right now I have a bunch of videos on my iPhone which I can’t put online until I can:
1) Check in to a specific location (longitude/latitude) — here.
2) Use PixelPipe to upload my photographs.
I’d really appreciate it if someone at Brightkite could answer ‘1)’.
I’ll be patient.
