Brighten up your day, meet new friends in person at BrightKite

Social networks are cool, there’s no doubt about that. Why? Because you get to meet new friends even in the realm of the virtual world. But wouldn’t it be more exciting if you can bring your social network profile into the real world and start meeting real people in the real world? Well, here comes BrightKite to help you do that.

Like we said, is a location-based social network that lets members to take their online profiles with them when they leave the virtual space and meet real people. With BrightKite, members can see the location of their friends while at the same time maintain some level of privacy to people who are not their friends, but could be potential friends.

What’s good about BrightKite is the fact that it works with all carriers and mobile phones. It is bias towards iPhone even if its he coolest mobile handset around. But, certainly it would be better if a member uses an iPhone, but if not users can still use BrightKite via text message or through the web.

And here are the nifty features of BrightKite

• View users nearby your current location. See what they are up to. Make new friends
• View all the public activity on Brightkite
• See where your friends are at a neighborhood, city, state and world zoom level
• See who visits your favorite places and what they post there, in real-time
• Keep track of all the places you go
• Brightkite can share your content with Twitter & Fire Eagle

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.