★ Why I Love Brightkite

As I stated in a post in late February announcing my joining Brightkite as a community manager, I could have applied to any location based social network in the world but I wanted to work at Brightkite. Here is one of the reasons why. This morning, I sampled the nearby results of the top 4 location based Check-in applications for iPhone. Foursquare, Brightkite, Gowalla and finally Yelp.

Each of these apps delivered very different results. A few things to keep in mind. Foursquare and Yelp mostly rely on user generated Content. Gowalla does to a degree but I can’t confirm where they get their other data. All networks allow you to add a place to say where you are but this is work. So many people that are in rural America won’t take time to add a custom place with an address and description of what kind of place they’re at. They’ll open the app, see these results and after trying to search, they’ll give up and move on.

I tried using Facebook and it only listed a nearby high school. I’m assuming that there’s some techie kid at that school using Facebook for iPhone and added it. Other than that, it’s an empty database for this area.

Yelp found nothing which isn’t too surprising. Their database is strongest in large cities and only the most popular restaurants in town are on Yelp and all have at least one review and only 50% of the restaurants have a photo. Most Yelp reviews I’ve seen aren’t from people in New Hampshire. They’re mostly people from New York or Boston that were taking a weekend trip and reviewing places they went to. It’s been hard finding anyone in town that actually uses Yelp.

FourSquare and Gowalla rely so heavily on the user added places model that their results were simply terrible. Gowalla was asking if I wanted to check in to a campground that is 18 minutes away by car. There are other places around but both of those networks just threw some things up on the screen. I tried to check in to the campground on gowalla and it said this was too far away to check in.

Also, note that Foursquare’s nearest “place” is 8,000 meters away which is basically 5 miles. Gowalla’s nearest place is 9K meters. Brightkite lists the corner store at the end of my road and other businesses that I’m passing as I drive from Switch Road to Highway 4 to I-89 into Lebanon, NH. I did a few more look ups on my way in to town and Brightkite kept showing me places I was nearby as FourSquare results didn’t really change.

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Brightkite soared for a few reasons. One reason is that Brightkite has the largest database of places. They’ve partnered with companies that have millions of locations and Brightkite has agreements to borrow that data which means if Joe’s Coffee Shop is a registered business with a business telephone, they’re going to be in Brightkite. If they move to a new location, it will take a few days to a month or two but that new location will be in Brightkite. You can also add a place if it’s not in here but I can guarantee you’re going to find it unless it’s Joe’s side business, “Saturday Night Cock-Fighting.” Since he’s not paying taxes on that business and it’s not licensed, it probably won’t be on Brightkite. Just click “add a place” and you can check in at the tournament, post a photo and say, “Betting $50 on Quick Draw McGraw” if that’s your thing.

Brightkite was my favorite LBS when I was in Florida and it’s my favorite here in New Hampshire. Even if Foursquare and Gowalla had better products, I’m not going to spend the first 5 minutes of my meal adding each place in town to their networks. It doesn’t benefit me at all. With Brighktite, the locations are there and I can just check-in effortlessly. That’s a good thing.