Brightkite users can choose to have their Facebook status updated and/or publish their location, notes, and photos directly into their Facebook News Feed.

To turn this new feature on, do the following:

1. On Brightkite visit your Account Settings, click on the Sharing tab.
2. Authorize Facebook by clicking the link next to all 3 steps.
3. Choose your Facebook cross-posting options and click save.

Brightkite promises this is only the beginning and that's there's more in store in terms of Brightkite/Facebook integration. We imagine that means they'll soon allow us to bring our Facebook friend list into Brightkite and vice versa.

The power of this integration is precisely why Facebook Connect is rapidly being adopted by web sites across the internet. That, and the fact that regular internet users immediately understand what "Connect with Facebook" means. Unfortunately, "Login with your OpenID" still has them scratching their heads.

There are lots of location based social networks available, but this one is refreshingly simple. Is that enough to effectively differentiate Shizzow? It's going to have to be, because there's not much else about the service that's unique. Most features are easily reproduced, however, and usability may be the key point of competition in this market.

Shizzow let's you "shout" about where you are, based on the name of the place instead of its address (that's figured out in the back end), and listen to the shouts of friends' locations. You can see who hangs out at particular locations and what locations your friends hang out at most often. Ultimately, the service should help your lonely self connect with people in public more often, if that's something you're looking for.

Posting can be done through a mobile interface, a Google Gadget or the Shizzow web page. There's some IM and SMS integration as well.

Is there an API? Not yet. When will it open for general availability? Just before the SXSW conference - that's pretty cliche, but it could work.

Why would you use this instead of Brightkite, Loopt, something built on top of Yahoo Fire Eagle? If you're comfortable using any of those services already, you probably have no need to use Shizzow. The company's attempts to explain how different their service is haven't been particularly convincing.

The Upside

If you're looking for a less geeky, attractive, easy to use location based network to use with a wider circle of people than just early adopters - Shizzow will likely play well with that crowd (the rest of the world). If we told you three years ago that a simple service that let you broadcast 140 characters or less about "what you're doing" was going to take the world by storm, you'd probably have called us crazy. Similarly, comparing location based social networks on features may not be the best criterion.

Usability is key to adoption beyond the relatively small number of people who obsess over every feature and Shizzow is simple, clean looking and usable. Location based social networking sometimes feels so bleeding edge pretentious that you wonder whether these communities even want more users. That's not the feeling you'll likely get looking around Shizzow.

Does the the world at large want to find friends and be found via short messages? We're not sure, but it's possible. Can Shizzow take its simple, useful tool out into the world successfully? We'll see, location based social networking is a new paradigm and given privacy concerns (even if they're not rationally "valid") it could be a hard sell to mainstream users.

Shizzow is now available for users in California. Drop by, give it a try and let us know what you think. See also WebMonkey's interview with the Shizzow CEO this morning, it's an interesting discussion about side projects, simplicity and mobile communication.

Available exclusively on Windows Mobile devices, Google makes good use of its Gears Geolocation API to get an approximate ID on where you're located. The API uses the same Cell ID technology Google uses for Google Maps on mobile devices. How does this affect your local search results? With My Location, users only have to type in whatever they're searching for without adding a location in. Whether it's sushi, the weather, or a local restaurant, Google will find both your results and your location. The API does most of the heavy work and cuts down on the amount of time spent typing in all of that information. We think this beats having to change your location every time you travel to another city or state.

Addressing Privacy Concerns

If you're concerned about your privacy, Google does its best to make sure your information is protected. According to the latest Google Mobile blog update,

"We take your privacy seriously and have designed Search with My Location so that it doesn't associate your location with any personally identifiable information, even if you are logged in. We won't send your location until you explicitly opt in, and you can always opt-out from the Gears Settings under the Tools menu."

We're glad they noted that you're opted-out of this option by default.

Limited Availability

Unfortunately, only a handful of Windows Mobile devices are currently supported. It would've been nice to see this in the Google app for the iPhone too. International Google users will also have to wait for this feature, as it is only available in the US and UK. To check and see if your device is supported, head to "www.google.com" on your mobile web browser. A "My Location" link should be available right under the search box. You may have to refresh the page to see the link. If refreshing doesn't help then your device probably isn't supported at the moment. My Location is a small, but more than welcomed feature for Google Local search. Here's a brief clip provided by Google on how "Search with My Location can help save your thumbs".

Image Credit: The Official Google Mobile Blog

Windows Mobile Only and not a lot of GPS

Looking at the list of supported phones, it is noteworthy that very few of them can actually perform location detection via GPS, though the list of phones that can support detection via cell-ID is relatively large. Using cell-phone towers for location detection, however, can be highly inaccurate, especially in less populated areas. Within cities and most suburbs, though, it tends to work reasonably well. On the other hand, given that a lot of users are very concerned about the privacy implications of location-aware software, maybe having a system that is not 100% accurate might just diffuse some of these fears.

Google also announced two partners in the UK that have already implemented the Geolocation API into their products: the UK version of travel site lastminute.com and the social discovery tool rummble.com.

Fire Eagle

It's important to point out that while this product seems similar to Yahoo's FireEagle at first glance, Google's product is really more basic, in that Yahoo not only provides the location API, but also wants to function as a central clearinghouse for location data and data exchange between different application.

Soon to be Ubiquitous

As we have pointed out before, we think that location-aware software is going to be one of the most interesting markets to watch in the near future and as as location-aware devices become more ubiquitous, we will hopefully see a lot of new and innovative services make use of them, as long as developers can assure users that they can mitigate the potential privacy implications of these apps.

However, it is important to note that Yahoo has made privacy a central focus of the platform and right upon sign-up, users are given the option to receive regular emails from Yahoo to see if they are still comfortable with sharing this kind of information. If you do not respond to this email, Yahoo will automatically disable your Fire Eagle account. Yahoo also allows users to turn the service off when they want to keep their location private.

Upon launch, Fire Eagle seems to be having some trouble with keeping up with the sudden rush of new users, as the service was sometimes unable to pinpoint our location. Once it is running smoothly again, we would not be surprised if Fire Eagle could make good on its promise of becoming the central clearinghouse for location services. Already, close to 800 developers are working on applications that make use of Fire Eagle in some form or another.

Still Limited

While we have little doubt that mobile social networking will become a big market in the future, today's reality is still rather bleak. Because of the limitations in the current hardware and software implementations, a lot of the location-based social networks like Loopt, WhosHere, Pelago's Whrrl, and others feel limited and at times rather gimmicky.

Also, most of these networks simply suffer from the fact that they don't have many users and that the chances of finding any of your friends on them are relatively low for now.

What About the Established Networks?

In the near future, mobile social networking is only really going to grow once the big social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, or MyYearBook start releasing location-aware applications for mobile devices.

Overall, we don't put too much stock into the ABI report. Thanks to highly targeted location-based advertising, there is a good chance that a mobile social network that manages to attract enough users (or any of the already establish social networks that releases a location aware application) will be able to be financially successful. For right now, however, with a market that is barely establish, trying to put a number on the potential success of these networks is almost silly.

Twinkle is a very capable Twitter client in its own right, and while it isn't quite as fully featured as Twitterific, it does have some features Twitterific doesn't have, including the ability to follow new users right from the application.

Unlike Twitterific, though, Twinkle does not have a built-in browser, so clicking on a URL closes the application and takes you to Safari instead.

You can also attach a picture to your own messages, but doing so crashed my phone twice in a row before it finally worked. Once it worked, the picture was uploaded to Tapulous' Twinkle page and added to the tweet as a link shortened by snipurl. Twinkle users don't have to click on the URL, but can see the picture right in the application.

Location Aware, but for Twinkle Users Only

One limitation of Twinkle, however, is that it is only aware of other Twinkle users in your vicinity and does not display tweets from 'regular' Twitter users in the location aware part of the app. As such, the application will only become really useful once more people start using it as their default client.

One more Twinkle only feature is, strangely, your profile picture. For some reason, the location aware part of Twinkle does not display your regular Twitter profile picture. Instead, you have to set one specifically for Twinkle.

Verdict

Besides that the user interface could be a bit snappier at times, Twinkle is a very cool addition to the growing pool of iPhone Twitter clients. It's also a great way to discover local Twitter users you might not have been following yet.

The authors also clearly have a sense of humor: when Twitter fails to respond to its update requests, the app displays a little warning sign with a whale tail in it.

But what happens when companies or governments start using technologies like these to track us against our will, or without our consent?

Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press reports tonight about definite example of cell phone location privacy intentionally violated without the knowledge of the phone owners. Researchers at Northeastern University won't say where the 100,000 people they tracked live or what companies helped them do it - but they made sure to do it outside of the United States.

What The Scientists Did

Ethically challenged physics researcher Cesar Hidalgo used cell phone towers to track the locations of more than 100,000 people whenever they made or received phone calls and SMS over a six month time period. Hidalgo and fellow researchers used the installed tracking technology in the phones of another 206 unwitting people, checking in on where they were every two hours. The conclusion: most people don't go that far from home in their every day lives. Almost half of the people tracked generally stayed within the same six mile area. Shocking, isn't it? Now just imagine what they could find out if people were given implants unknowingly.

That's Worse Than Creepy

It's reminiscent of the MIT researcher we wrote about last year who is collecting "passive social graph data" by watching whose cell phones come near who else's, something he calls "reality mining."

In this case, though, the subjects of the Northeastern study didn't know they were being tracked and studied. Hidalgo says that's ok because they were studied in anonymous aggregate. "In the wrong hands the data could be misused," Hidalgo told CNN. "But in scientists' hands you're trying to look at broad patterns.... We're not trying to do evil things. We're trying to make the world a little better." Tell that to a long history of science experiment subjects tested against their will.

Even the study of people in anonymous aggregate needs to be opt-in, otherwise there's just too much trust being put in anonymous researchers.

This is why we celebrated FireEagle as much as we did when it launched. That platform for other location aware services to collect data through asks users on a regular basis if they are ok with FireEagle continuing to keep track of their location reports.

That's beyond opt-in, it's respectfully, effectively communicative. Anything less is reason to reject location awareness in general.

Creepy eye photo by Flickr user Jimmy_joe