I've always been a computer guy. Ever since my babysitter introduced me to Flash's ActionScript when I was 11, I've basked in the comforting blue glow of computer monitors, deep into the evening. It follows, then, that I also like the Internet. Like any serious Internet junkies, I enjoy social networking, which leads me, winded and wordy, to my topic: Twitter.
I like Twitter, I like the ideas behind Twitter, and for the most part I like the execution of Twitter. For the longest time I considered Twitter the playground of the Digerati, the Laportes, Calacanises, and Roses of the world. For us lowly peons, the only purpose Twitter served was a medium to follow those more famous than ourselves, and to converse with the two or three other real friends who had signed up for the micro-blogging platform. Today, though, I see the game is different.
My revelation started when I switched from Twitterific Premium to Twinkle as my main method of interacting with Twitter. One of the features the latter has that the former lacks is the ability to view tweets nearby, anywhere from 1 to 1000 miles from your current location (determined by the iPhone's GPS). This, I thought at the time, was perfect: a marriage between the wide adoption rate of Twitter and the localized, GPS-centric social networking of Loopt and Brightkite. I was looking forward to getting restaurant tips and conversing about location-specific topics like I had the few times I was able to find other Brightkite users nearby.
This aspiration was further supported by my first conversation with a stranger found using the Nearby feature in Twinkle: a guy was looking for a place to go in the Lower East Side for dinner and I recommended Satsko because of their great sushi and friendly staff. Later, I got a direct message from the guy thanking me for such a great tip and saying he had such a great time at the place. Wow, I thought, location aware social networking in action!
And then my hopes were dashed. When I got back to my dorm I open up Twinkle and start to browse for people near me. What I was met with shocked me:
"What's up?? Any ladies wanna talk?"
"Any ladies want to trade pics..pm me."
"Riddle me this, riddle me that. Nipple me this, nipple me that. U gotta love me folks!"
Attached to the second one was a picture of an obviously excited penis seemingly shrink-wraped in a pair of Hanes boxers. The third tweet was not much better, a picture of a pair of breasts accompanied that one. These were all beat, sadly, by one that said
"any 13-14 year old ladies want to talk?"
My stomach turned at that one.
These remarks beg the question: just what the hell is happening to Twitter? It is the only social network I know of that has both a glam-filled upper crust coving a seedy, sex-craved teenage underbelly. It is an odd mix to be sure, the Albrechts and Obamas communicating in the same public forum as Mr. Hanes. I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of it, unsure what, if any, conclusions to draw. Perhaps Twitter could make money by becoming a red light district of sorts. That is, if it hasn't already.
Every once in a while we'll see a new application for the iPhone that is truly interesting, briefly breaking the struggle of all the To Do lists and flashlights. The most recent one of note, aside from the new voice features on Google's app, is called ZOOZBeat. Check out the video over at TechCrunch (trust me, you need to see the video to get how cool it is, text won't do it justice).
A while back I messed around with, what I assumed at the time, to be a not-so-interesting notes in the cloud system called Evernote. Wow, that was a mistake. What I didn't realize at the time was that Evernote is more than a way to write something on your iPhone and see it on their web interface later. Instead Evernote is, as their overview video says, an external brain. While this seems like poorly formulated marketing speak, it is actually very close to reality.
Sure, Evernote isn't going to take your tests for you or fill out TPS reports in your absence, but thanks to OCR technology, it can remember. Kind of. Yes, you can post a quick note and yes you can post a quick voice reminder, but the true power of Evernote is the ability to post a picture (taken either on your phone or by a webcam) and then be able to search the text in that photo later. For example, I took a picture of the slip that has my RA's name, my mailbox combo, and a bunch of other useful numbers with my iSight and uploaded it to Evernote. After about a minute, I was able to search for my RA's name, Alicia, and Evernote found the picture and highlighted her name. This worked despite the fact that Alicia, as you can see, is handwritten in pencil. Amazing.
[caption id="attachment_303" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Searching for handwritten text"][/caption]
The OCR abilities of Evernote are awesome and when combined with the relitivly simple tast of storing and syncing voice and text notes the application becomes unparalleled in usefulness. What makes it even better, as I mentioned above, is that Evernote has an iPhone app, and we all know how much I love iPhone apps.
Overall, Evernote is a superb application and service that has helped me out and saved me so much time even over the last two days after rediscovering it that I can't imagine putting it down again. Great app, free service, jaw dropping results.
Recent months have seen a dramatic increase in the number of social networks. All of them include adding friends and filling out a profile and poking of one form or another, but only a select few include what appears to have been the unknown holy grail of social networks: location. Location-based social networks take the abstract wall posts and status updates and put them on a map. With a location-based social network, like Brightkite or Loopt, I can look around my current location and find people nearby and interact with them. The inclusion of location adds a whole new level of dynamic interaction between users that was simply not possible before.
Because the trend is towards location aware applications is rising, so to are mobile social networking applications. There is no need for a location based network if you're always going to be at your computer when you're interacting with other users. Even if you had a laptop, your location wouldn't change frequently enough to use it as a basis for the network and as a basis for interacting with other users. Further, laptops generally don't carry what all these new networks depend on: a GPS.
But a phone does. Specifically, smartphones. Granted, services like Brightkite and Loopt do work on traditional cellphones, but the big screen, Internet access, and full keyboard usually make smartphones the weapon of choice for these up and coming social networks. Smartphones also usually come equiped with a GPS, which makes this whole new exciting field possible.
The contenders
For the purposes of this writeup, I will focus on two fairly new presences in the location-based social networking scene: Brightkite [info] and Loopt [info]. The former is the product of a Denver-based team and is currently in an invite-only beta stage while the latter was born in my hometown of Mountain View and is open to the public. Both have iPhone applications, which will be used for this examination, as well as support for Blackberries and some traditional phones. Both also have an online portal where one can update one's status, talk to friends, and generally interact with the community at large. These two networks try to do the same thing: use the location-aware capabilities of modern phones to connect people, but the way these two networks go about achieving this aim are almost completely different.
[caption id="attachment_276" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Mountain View born Loopt is more flashy and has a handful of very interesting features."][/caption]
Loopt is the older and more well funded of the two. Within the service, there is a definite divide between public and private data. That is, it is conceivable to use the whole service with just a closed group of friends and not interact with the outside world at all. This is in sharp contrast with Brightkite's more public-only approach. In Loopt, a user can have a public and a private profile. The public profile consists of interests, networks, tags, age, a quick bio, and the like. The private profile, for lack of a better term, is much simpler. All it is is your picture and your most recent update.
One interesting feature of Loopt is the map. By going to the map tab on the iPhone, or simply by logging in to the traditional website, you can see a map that has all your status updates and all your friend's status updates. Particularly in the mobile version, this is a really cool way to get a visual overview of what everybody is up to. That being said, it is kind of depressing when nobody is on your map but you.
The map, however, is only used in the private part of the network. That is, you can see the people on your friend's list and their updates on the map, and nobody else. If you want to discover people nearby, you must enter information to fill out your public profile. With this done you can see who is around you and what they're doing (though only in list form, not on a map) in the Mix tab. Aside from these different communication types you can post pictures to your account as well, which will also show up on the map for your friends.
Integration seems to be a big selling point with Loopt (and Brightkite). By logging in to your Loopt account you can setup a connection between Loopt and your Twitter account, allowing all updates posted to Loopt to get sent over to Twitter as well. Further, Loopt will update your Twitter location with the location your most recent note was posted at. The locations are comfortably vague, only saying an approximate street crossing and not an exact address or co-ordinates. Interestingly, when your Loopt post gets blasted out to Twitter, an @ [location] tag comes along with it. For example, if I post "Hey guys", my Twitter feed will read "Hey guys @ Charles Lindbergh Blvd". This is troubling to say the least, as it eats up part of your word count for your tweets. Loopt can also be synced with your Facebook account so your Facebook status is updated when you update Loopt.
The real strength in Loopt is having friends and being able to interact with them. It uses the location-aware feature of the iPhone to keep in better contact with friends while Brightkite uses the same functionality to meet new people.
[caption id="attachment_278" align="alignleft" width="245" caption="Denver, CO based BrightKite is more the text-adventure of the two services."][/caption]
Brightkite, too, allows you to sync your account with your Twitter and Facebook accounts. What is nice about the Brightkite syncing, however, is that it doesn't add the annoying "@ [location]" bit behind your updates. The application still updates your Twitter location with your most recent location posted.
The location-aware section of Brightkite is similar to Loopt in that it uses a vague address instead of an exact location. However, there is no map for Brightkite, which is really too bad. Instead, you can set how many meters away you want to look for people (from 20m to 4000m) and the application will look for posts that are geotagged within that area of you. The results are presented in a list form. While Brightkite is limited to 4000 meters it seems Loopt allows you to search up to 5 miles, though there is no way to tell Loopt to only look within a specific distance.
Here's a quick video overview of the Brightkite app:
While both services are built upon the notion of a location-based social network, I think Brightkite is the better option. While the map is a tough thing to sacrifice, I am not fond at all of having a public profile that is really in no way related to my private profile. Additionally, the @ [location] that Loopt adds to tweets and Facebook updates is annoying beyond belief.
I am also a fan of the Brightkite iPhone app over the Loopt app for one, arguably stupid, reason: it worries me lest. Here's the thing, when I see a little red bug on the upper right corner of an icon on my iPhone it is usually because I've missed something (a call, a text, an email) or I need to do something (update an app). Never is the little red bug because I'm doing something right or because I'm up to date on everything. The Brightkite app uses none of these scary red tags. The Loopt app uses them in spades. There is a little "!" on my List icon (which I have yet to figure out what it is trying to say to me) and an "On" on my Mix icon. These bug me because I instinctively think seeing red means I need to do something when, in reality, the red just means that everything is fine. I appreciate the fact that Loopt is trying to tell me, with the "On" bug, that other people can see where I am, but the fact is that thats the whole point of the social network. It would be like if Facebook constantly notified you saying "hey! people can see your pictures!". I get it, I know, its ok, let it happen.
The only drawback to Brightkite, and probably the reason Loopt is seeing a steady increase in downloads (aside from it being featured on a recent iPhone ad), is that it is still only in private beta. Once it goes public I expect to see a much faster adoption rate. Anybody want an invite?
PS: If you want to add me as a friend or just check my page on either service, go here for Brightkite and here for Loopt.
Apple is now officially the leading manufacturer of cellphones. This is awesome. It is no shock to see the RAZR take the number two spot simply because networks give those things away like hotcakes. What does slightly puzzle me, though, is the fact that the iPhone is in the top spot despite being offered on only one network. One would think that because RIM's phones are on so many different networks, thus making them more availiable, that the iPhone would have a much harder time taking the top spot.
It would be interesting to see a chart of new AT&T customers versus iPhone sales to see if the availibility of the iPhone on only one network hurt its sales at all (because from these sales figures it - oddly - doesn't look like it).
Update: There is a really cool feature of BrightKite I didn't know about when I made the review! By going to account settings > sharing you can set BrightKite to blast your message out to your Twitter account automatically! How cool is that!? This will help with the catch 22 issue I mention at the end of the review.
Let it be known that I love new ideas, new ways of looking at things. I love even more when these ideas are in website form, complete with a fair helping of web 2.0 and cool minimalist graphics. To show my adoration for new web 2.0 sites I am always itching to get an invite to the betas and once I do I use the new site night and day.
However, after the release of BrightKite and their new iPhone app, I got to thinking. How is it that any of these sites actually get off the ground? Specifically what I'm talking about is social sites (whereas sites like Digg and reddit would work without a major base because the content could be computer generated). With a social site, on the other hand, there is so much dependance on the users to make more users show up and use the service that I am amazed any new sites ever get off the ground. Its only by sheer chance that Facebook and MySpace achieved notoriety while Orkut, which is backed by arguably the biggest presence on the Internet (Google), is relatively obscure.
Then there are special scenarios like Twitter. Twitter is special because it is really only surviving because the elite bloggers, newsmakers, and the like use it. Little Joe the plumber (had enough yet?) like you and me can use it, sure, but will never reach the true purpose of a site like Twitter (because, honestly, we just don't have that many interesting things to say).
Like I said, I only have all this on the mind because of the new location-based social site called BrightKite. From what I can tell, it is esentially Twitter on steroids with a GPS duct taped to the side of it. I'm rooting for it, though, and I hope that the addition of the location-aware services successfully walk the line between being cool enough to attract people and requiring too many expensive gadgets to use fully. Good luck!
[/caption]
[/caption]
[/caption]
