Social media is cool, there’s no question about that, however, when users have the ability to incorporate location with their social media the possibilities are seemingly endless. Share information and life streams with people near you or simply tie your social media to a specific location… the added value and usefulness in doing this results in an your stream becoming even more useful and interesting. And so, to honor the great strides that LBS solution providers are making with location-aware apps, I’m pleased to share with you 10 amazing mobile social-LBS apps (no particular order) that I think will continue to make a splash as we head into 2010… enjoy!
Social Mobile LBS App #1 — Brightkite (www.brightkite.com & Twitter @Brightkite) is a fun, social tool based on users’ location and enables users to see who’s nearby and what they are doing. I currently use Brightkite on iPhone although Android and S60 supported clients are also available. Firing up Brightkite causes the app to perform a hit on the user’s location. At that point the user can then check-in, this pulls a POI search of nearby places of interest where the user can select his location from the list or add the place to the list of it doesn’t exist yet… the next time he checks in at that location the POI should appear in the DB. During a check-in, if the user has pre-defined sharing to social networks, details of the check-in can be sent directly to Twitter providing a we blink url where users can see details of the check-in along with a map and notes. Brightkite also provides facebook connect for simple sharing of location information with your facebook connections as well.
User Check-in seems to be the most widely used feature, although social networking with other users is also enabled as is streaming and sharing comments based on a specific event or hashtag (this was popular at an Ignite Boulder event I attended last year). I frequently check-in with a photo and so its great to know that Brightkite also provides Flickr connect so mobile photo uploads can automatically be shared on my Flickr stream as well… handy! See more at Brightkite.com and feel free to connect with yours truly at http://brightkite.com/people/gisuser
