Jamrock's dashboard

Also the 'offificial' response was wrong:

"Hi Susannah, to post to Twitter you must be in public mode. The reason is is Twitter has no privacy, we don't want your private posts going to twitter where anyone may see them."

Twitter obviously does have privacy. And all we want is to be able to cross post from Brightkite to Twitter while keeping our Brightkite info private as well as our Twitter info.

I love Brightkite. I don't use it because of this flaw. QED.

AGAIN: This is enough of an issue for me that I probably won't use Brightkite until/unless it's changed. I really love Brightkite, but Twitter is where my primary social network lives. :/

Ok. I tested the above and I can confirm that you have to give everyone at least "city" rights or your cross post to twitter don't work.

This is how it should work

1. Private turned on means no updates past or present show up. Optional extra to add to this "always show" or "always hide"

2. Cross posts to Twitter while "private" is turned on should a) work but b) the URL http://brightkite.com/objects/xxx would not be visible from the userpage only if someone knew the URL (like a Flickr URL for a private photo)

This way my Mum can see my (protected) Twitter post and follow the brightkite url but a visitor to brightkite/user could not.

Optional extra: Selective cross post i.e. having provided Twitter credentials your post is cross posted only if you prefix with a "+" or only not crossposted if you prefix with a "-" as they do with Blip.fm

Just feedback from a user!

Ah, this gets worse. Now I have changed the "everyone" setting to Hidden then updates to Twitter don't work.

"We currently do not support sending your Brightkite updates to a protected Twitter"

You already do! My Twitter is set to private (most of the time) and my BrightKite posts show up just fine. The problem is I expected BrightKite "private" to work as it does for Twitter. I have now found that "everyone else" setting but of course it it is not retroactive (which, like others, I would like).

Overall BrightKite works exactly as I would want it to with the exception of the privacy some of which was my misunderstanding (the everyone setting) and some which is implementation.

Of course the service is great, free and beta so this is feedback not criticism and that was a speedy response.

In short I think a number of us want "private" to work like Twitter but adding a selective (always show or always hide option in addition would be excellent).

Brightkiting today on a miserable trek across Germany made the day much more interesting!

My Twitter is private and so (officially) is my BrightKite but because I have elected to cross post to my (protected) Twitter then BrightKite shows my (allegedly private and 'locked') updates. This does not work!