On geo-location-based socnets

Thursday, June 26th, 2008
by Brian Daniel Eisenberg

I’m a big fan of geotagging photos, but I’m not quite sure how I feel about location-based social networking sites. The only real way to fully understand the implications of geotagging your location and blasting it out to your “friends” (cough cough *stalkers*), is to take these shiny new socnets out for a spin.

I signed up for Britekite when it first went into beta, but it took me just up until about a week ago to spend some time figuring out its inner workings. I’ve finally mastered the basic sms techniques for “checking in” and I’m able to more or less geo-tag myself as I see fit. Here’s a recent map of where I’ve checked in:

There are countless implications for broadcasting this much meta out across the internets and I’m sure this is even more of a problem for women with stalker types, ex-bff’s, and other wacko’s. Security is of the uptmost importance in these geo-location-based socnets, and as soon as the “friend circle” is breached by unwanted lurker/stalker types, the whole thing could implode. Personally, if I don’t feel like broadcasting my location, then maybe all I need to do is just send bogus geo data when I checkin, but that would defeat the purpose.

For now, I’ll continue playing around with Britekite. I’ve got invites in case anyone wants in.