My feedreader has exploded with articles about 2007 TechStars team BrightKite. I had the chance to ask one of the cofounders Martin May 5 quick questions.

1) One year ago you came together to build BrightKite, ever imagine you would be in this position?

We had of course hoped that what we are doing would be a success, but to be honest, it has been going far better than we imagined it would. We are thrilled that our users love the service, and we are getting some awesome feedback. More importantly, we try to listen to the people who are not loving our service (yet)…their concerns and suggestions are a major driving force for what we work on every day.

2) Many blogs and newspapers have covered you, what do you wish they were talking about that they are not (are they missing any stories or features?)

Generally, we’ve been very pleased with the coverage so far. We didn’t really set out to get any media coverage just yet (we’re in private beta), but somehow it just happened. The most common misunderstandings we tend to see are “it tracks me…I don’t want to be tracked”, “it’s Twitter with location and photos”, “but nobody is near me yet, so it’s not useful”.

Most people who have tried the service understand that Brightkite doesn’t really track you, it’s up to you to decide how often you “check in”, and at what accuracy. On top of that, we have pretty comprehensive privacy controls.

While the service might seem like “Twitter with location and photos” at first glance, that’s not at all what we are trying to do. We want to connect people around the places that they visit. The “location micro-blogging” component is just a way to give people incentive to actually “check in”, especially if there is nobody in their area using the service yet.

This also touches on the perceived “but nobody is near me yet, so it’s not useful” problem. We’ve found that even if you’re the only user in your area, and have no friends in the system, it’s still extremely valuable as a personal location log. For example, it’s amazing to see what I had for dinner six months ago when I last visited a particular restaurant, and what NOT to order. That, combined with the feeling of being a “Brightkite Pioneer” (somebody who is first to check in at a new place) and syndicating the created content out to a personal blog (coming soon) makes the experience rewarding, even for early adopters.

3) How is scaling going?

It’s going pretty well. The main challenge has been scaling up our community support and human resources. The technical infrastructure has been holding up pretty well so far.

4) What is the biggest surprise coming from user feedback?

The biggest surprise for us has been the sheer amount of enthusiasm that we get from some users. We have users advocating our product on blogs, forums, and at conferences. A few people have created screencasts to explain certain features. We are consistently among the top 10 tweeted words on Twitter. Some users have begun building device-specific clients, despite the lack of an API (coming soon). Somebody even went as far as setting up an invite-sharing site, specifically for Brightkite (http://brightkiteinvites.com/).

As you can see, there is a huge grassroots following of what we are doing. We attribute that to the way that we are handling user feedback (through Twitter, GetSatisfaction, e-mail , IM and in person). We are generally very quick to respond, and are usually able to address most problems and feature requests in a timely fashion. We love talking to our users, and they know that we are listening.

5) Are you hiring?

Ha…yes! We currently have several open positions that we’d like to fill right away. Those positions include:

- Community Manager
- Ruby on Rails Developer
- Flash/Flex Developer
- Systems Administrator

More information about these positions can be found at http://www.techstars.org/companies/brightkite/, or you can contact us directly at jobs AT brightkite DOT KOM.

Thank You!