The Realist Idealist

A colleague just introduced me to BrightKite.com and as I’ve been playing with it all I can think of are the nearly infinite possibilties for it.

First and foremost the service is going to need to be integrated with others so that it doesn’t exist in a vaccum. Don’t know if they plan an API or not, but I suspect they must.

For instance, it needs to be connected to Twitter so that one message updates to all the same places. That said, it’s in many ways more robust than Twitter and takes advantage of mobile in a way I haven’t seen many other similar tools do for photos, geo-location and social networking. I don’t suspect it will be too long before we simply have a service that reads our phone’s GPS location and we opt in or out or letting “friends” or “followers” see where we are… but until then, there’s BrightKite building out its services. It’s currently in early beta.

www.brightkite.com

Essentially it allows you to see what’s going on in a location, who’s there right now, how close to you they are, and who’s been there. Right now, it appears to be a collection of mostly early-adopter geeks (sincerely gotta love ‘em), but as always with such tools, you can make it valuable by getting a small group of friends or colleagues to use it if it suits your purposes (e.g. geographically dispersed or oft traveling co-workers or family members.)

I would love to see such a service that lets you know/see the realists, idealists, and general do-gooders in your area as well. Preferably integrated with a site like Idealist. Even better would be to see who is near you that may be seeking help or a partner for work on a community project.