Today we began handing out the first private beta accounts off of our invite list. The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

Brightkite is a location-based social network that enables people to take their online profiles with them into the real-world and make real-world friends. Users can see where their friends are and what they’re up to all while maintaining comprehensive degrees of privacy to non-friends. Depending on a user’s privacy setting they can also be open to meeting others nearby.

Brightkite has been designed from the ground up to be accessible to everyone regardless of carrier or how fancy your phone is. Currently there are a handful of location-based social networks that exist within the walled gardens of carriers or courtyards of the fancy iPhone. How fun is a social network when only a small percentage of your friends (and potential friends) can use it? Brightkite has been designed to be device & carrier agnostic. Although rich media devices such as iPhone obviously offer a better user experience, at the lowest level you can interact with Brightkite via text message (SMS), web and iPhone.

SMS Interface - Although these text messages are shown on a fancy phone, you can interact with Brightkite on any phone via text message (SMS).

If you are waiting for an invite we hope it arrives soon. You can also get in by finding a friend with an invite. Once you’re in, so are your friends. In the meantime, below are some select screen shots of the live Brightkite beta web interface:

Around Me - View users nearby your current location. See what they are up to. Make new friends.

Brightkite Universe - View all the public activity on Brightkite. Notice the posts from the Maldives; the service is not limited to the US.

Live Friends Map - See where your friends are at a neighborhood, city, state and world zoom level.

Place Pages - See who visits your favorite places and what they post there, in real-time.

Visited Places - Keep track of all the places you go.

Sharing - Brightkite can share your content with Twitter & Fire Eagle

Brightkite iPhone Application - The Brightkite iPhone application is coming very soon.

Posted by Brady Becker at 6:03 PM in Brightkite, Product, Twitter