Yesterday, my friend, Daniel, invited me to try out a new mobile messaging / microblogging service called BrightKite. With a writeup on Webware and a shiny new closed beta, BrightKite is teeming in buzz. I was excited to try it out.
I’ve been using Dodgeball since August 2006. Dodgeball is now owned by Google and many of my friends are on there, although a number of them have me blocked, primarily because I like to check in from all over the Bay Area. Lots of people who live in San Francisco feel like “San Francisco” means the City of San Francisco only (and not the Bay Area). I like Dodgeball because I can add locations in it, add an alias to make it easy for me to check in, and use it to remember what I should Yelp.
In January of 2007, I signed up on Plazes as soon as it opened for public beta. I don’t really use Plazes that much, although I do like the fact that I can check in anywhere in the world. This makes it handy for me to track where I visit when I’m on vacation, so I don’t check in from Boise, Idaho (and irritate the four or five Dodgeballers who still follow me). The syntax is simple and I can go back and edit my check ins. Although the UI is a little clunky, it’s easy to check in with Plazes. If more than one of my friends was on there, I’d probably use it more than Dodgeball.
Enter BrightKite. It has a pretty web 2.0 user interface and behaves like a combination of Twitter and Plazes. Very nice. Unfortunately, I can’t use it. Let’s see why.
- Dodgeball
- me: @ bayside market
- db: OK! We just sent a message to your 17 friends in SF letting them know you’re at Bayside Market.
- Plazes
- me: at bayside market in san francisco
- pl: You’ve been plazed at Bayside Market on 120 BRANNAN ST.
- BrightKite
- me: ?bayside market, san francisco, ca
- bk: Pick one:
1) San Francisco Soup Company (1950 University Ave)
2) more
- me: ?bayside market
- bk: Pick one:
1) Bayside Design Incorporated (846 N Hillview Dr)
2) Bayside Equipment Company (3562 Haven Ave)
3) more
- me: @san francisco, ca (evidently, bk thinks I’m still in the South Bay).
- bk: Are you sure that you want to check in @ San Francisco, CA, US? Reply with Y to confirm, or try again.
- me, not stomping my Blackberry Pearl into the Embarcadero: STOP
With SIX SMS messages back and forth from my phone to BrightKite, I gave up. That’s a usability flunk right there. Yesterday, when I attempted to check in from Trader Joe’s in Sunnyvale, it took nine tries before success was mine. Any time I have to reply to an “Are you sure?” SMS message, you get a D-. If I can check into Dodgeball, which seems to be limited by locale and mainly abandoned, or Plazes, which is so European that the ZIP code is before the city name on their website (i.e.: 94107 San Francisco, USA), why does BrightKite give me so much frustration?
I’m giving the developers the benefit of the doubt, because their product is still in private beta, but it really needs to solve this simple problem. If it’s this much of a pain in the neck to check in (reply with 1, really? seriously?), everyone will use BrightKite for about three weeks.
I hope sending a photo to the service isn’t this much of a pain. I don’t have time to play footsie with a mobile service.
Here’s how I should check into BrightKite: @ bayside market in san francisco, ca or @ bayside market on brannan st in san francisco (having a different symbol than @ to check in somewhere (it’s ? for a business) breaks standard conventions). If there are multiple locations, let me come back later on the web and fix it.
Good luck with this, BrightKite. I’d really like to be able to use your service, but it required too much willpower not to hurl my phone in the bay. Sorry.
