Allow me to give you a run through of my usual Friday and Saturday nights. The night normally starts after dinner, at this point in time I will spend two or three hours planning on what my night is going to look like. The majority of this time I spend talking with local friends to gauge where the best place is to end up. I will also often plan during the week as well, to attempt to avoid this issue. I frequently think to myself, it would be fantastic if I were presented with a list of where my friends are and are going to be. In conjunction to that, I would also like to know where the general public is going and who arrives where I am. I probably spend 3-6 hours a week doing this, which roughly means I lose about nine days a year - just because of the planning I spend with regards to being social.

The answer to my problem - BrightKite. BrightKite is a Twitter and Fire.eagle mash up that allows users to know where their friends are, where their friends are going to be and when their friends arrive. Somewhat evasive, I know. However, imagine a situation where you (the user) after a long day at the library and work want to unwind in the quickest way possible with a bunch of your friends. You are then presented with a map, with tags in your immediate area of where your friends are, what they are doing and their thoughts on what they are doing. Or better yet, you are cheating on your girlfriend with her best friend at a local club. You receive an alert from BrightKite explaining that “Your girlfriend just arrived at a location that is 20 meters from you”. Wouldn’t you like that kind of warning? I know I would - haha.

BrightKite is currently in private beta and starting to create an active community. But the problem I have with all of these social startups (cough Twitter cough) is that they aren’t marketing towards the general public. I understand that they may be gauging interest with qualified testers in order to get the most constructive feedback possible. However, why not gauge interest with the people that are most likely going to be using the service? In BrightKite’s case I see this as potentially being a massive roadblock. When they realize that bloggers and other new technology people don’t actually care where their internet friends are because those people are usually half way across the World.

How I would market BrightKite

To begin, I believe marketing to new technology users is only smart in the extreme early going. Normally these people have media involvement and you could see a flux of users just based off of that. However, new tech people use a product for a couple of days to gain knowledge of the product and then they let it lay dormant until they find a use for the service. Case and point - me. I used BrightKite for about three days and stopped. Why? Because none of my friends were on it. It is quite obvious that the most successful services on the web are ones that appeal to everyone - Facebook, Myspace, Ebay, Craigslist etc. Not only do they appeal to everyone, but they embody everyone. Everyone is involved and contributing, and that’s what makes them successful.

So, if I were BrightKite I would market to users that are somewhat intellectual, young, hip and have money. In conjunction to those demographics I would market to large clusters of people. Easy answer - Universities. I’m not going in depth on how to properly market to universities but here’s a couple of ideas:

• Facebook Period. Apps, Groups, Advertising whatever.
• Launch parties where instead of paying a cover to the club, bar or venue the user signups for the service, uses it and provides their username at the door.
• Swag give-a-ways, plant yourself with a box of t-shirts, whiteboards and Nerf balls and start handing them out or even trade for them mobile signups.

University students love technology that applies to their life, but simply don’t know these types of services.

I am very interested to see where BrightKite takes their service. By the way if anyone at BrightKite read this and are looking for marketing services or consultant work, I would have an in depth market strategy report by tomorrow end of day. Haha.

I’ve decided to start doing shorter blog posts. Thus, I found this nifty, and super helpful if I may add, web site. Basically, whenever you forget if it’s Christmas - click here!

Hope you enjoy! Lol.