Brightkite's location-sharing overhaul still bogging down service

October 7, 2009 | Kim-Mai Cutler

Location-sharing service Brightkite is undergoing a major overhaul that will allow one-way relationships. In fact, the revamp is so major that it’s bogged down the service for at least three days. The company says it’s still flushing out some bugs.

Brightkite, which merged with Limbo in April, is taking cues from the popularity of Twitter by adopting more asynchronous relationships with a “fans” feature. That means you can follow people without having to mutually request or accept each other like in Facebook’s original model.

People who use Brightkite can still have two-way friendships, but they can share updates with the public or with their immediate online social circle. Posts can be shared on Twitter and Facebook and with or without a paired location. You can also track streams of information like what people are saying about food in San Francisco or unicorns around the world.

In addition, the company’s adding stats to locations, so a user can see how many people have posted on a given place.

There’s also a new version of the iPhone app waiting for Apple’s approval. It gives users the ability to rate posts with a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” and there are more place statistics.

Sounds promising, but they need to get it working. Brightkite users are already clamoring to get it up as they’re adding tiny Brightkite logos to their Twitter photos called “Twibbons.”