Brightkite was a location-based

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

website. Users were able to "

check in Check-in is the process whereby people announce their arrival at an office, hotel, airport, hospital, seaport or event. Office check-in Many offices have a reception or front office area near the entrance to greet or assist visitors arriving to a ...

" at places by using text messaging or one of the mobile applications and they were able to see who is nearby and who has been there before. The service was created in 2007 by Brady Becker, Martin May, and Alan Seideman who previously founded the

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

notification service Loopnote. In April 2009 Brightkite was acquired by

mobile social network Mobile social networking is social networking where individuals with similar interests converse and connect with one another through their mobile phone and/or tablet computer, tablet. Much like web-based social networking, mobile social networking ...

Limbo. By December 2011, all Brightkite apps had been pulled from app stores and the Brightkite website was replaced with a message stating, "This is not goodbye...we're just moving on to something better". By April 2012, the Brightkite website no longer appeared to be in operation.

Overview

Brightkite allowed registered users to connect with their existing friends and also meet new people based on the places that they go. Once a user "checked in" at a place, they could post notes and photos to a location and other users could comment on those posts. Brightkite had applications for Android,

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

( iPhone), and

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typic ...

. Brightkite is no longer available.

Android app

The Brightkite Android app used the phone's GPS to locate the user and it had many of the same features as the iPhone app. Notable additions include mapping and background notifications.

iPhone app

The Brightkite iPhone app used the iPhone's geolocation features to automatically locate the user. From the app a user could check in, post a note or photo, send messages, browse their friend and nearby streams and access their account settings.

The Brightkite Wall

The Brightkite Wall was a visualization tool that used to show real-time updates from a place, user, or keyword. Users also have the option to display posts from Twitter containing a specific

hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...

. The

Mattress Factory The Mattress Factory is a contemporary art museum located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a pioneer of site-specific installation art and features permanent installations by artists Yayoi Kusama, James Turrell, and Greer Lankton. The museum' ...

Art Museum used the Brightkite Wall in the museum lobby as a way to communicate with visitors.

Related applications

Brightkite had a public

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

(API) available to build websites and applications that augment the official website.Brightkite API
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References