Brightkite recent­ly announced it’s iPhone App com­ing to the iTunes App Store soon. Here’s the video demo of the appli­ca­tion:

I have been using Brightkite along with Twit­ter for cou­ple of months now since James has invit­ed me to the ser­vice. It’s a darn impres­sive social net­work­ing appli­ca­tion that uses Yahoo’s Fire Eagle which allows users to man­age their loca­tion.

The fea­tures that are planned for the Brightkite iPhone app are:

• Auto geo-loca­tion includ­ing Place Snap­ping and Pick a Place
• Noti­fi­ca­tions (near­by friends, posts, friend requests, com­ments & men­tions)
• Post­ing pho­tos and notes to loca­tions
• Near­by peo­ple and activ­i­ty feed
• Friends lists and activ­i­ty feed
• Peo­ple, places and posts search
• Thread­ed mes­sag­ing
• Pro­file streams
• Place steams
• Place­marks
• Com­ment­ing on posts

The only draw­backs that I cur­rent­ly forsee are the fol­low­ing (at least w/ Brightkite.com web app):

• You must have the dis­ci­pline to “check in” to your cur­rent loca­tion. I’m hop­ing the “auto geo-loca­tion” can address this with no sweat.
• Some­times, the sync­ing between Brightkite and Twit­ter does not work. I think this is more on Twit­ter’s end (from what I heard fol­low­ing @brightkite).
• There were a cou­ple of times an emailed pho­to would appear late (2‑hours late one-time) from the time it was tak­en.

All in all, it’s a great ser­vice. I can’t wait to use that iPhone app vs. going to Safari every time to check-in. I just hope the sync­ing (Brightkite to Twit­ter) get’s pol­ished.

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