The recent LA Times article on Brightkite has created quite a negative response from the community, and for that I truly apologize.   The intent of the article theme wasn’t to insult our female users, rather just the opposite: to say how important the female population is to the growth of the community.  Obviously, that didn’t come across, and the analogies I shared didn’t paint the right picture of how we’ve sought to attract women to the service.

The theme of my conversation with the journalist was about building a social community in which women can feel safe when posting a location.  We’ve adjusted functionality and the user interface and placed greater emphasis on privacy controls – which women told us were really important to overcome fears and issues with location-based services.

Clearly, I did not do a good job of articulating this or my feelings to the LA Times.   For that, I deeply apologize and endeavor to be more conscious of the impact of my words – to our entire Brightkite user base, and especially to the women that have made it such an amazing community.

Jonathon Linner, CEO

Posted by jonathon