I love Goog 411. And I’ve lately been feeling like I “get” social networking, even though I struggle to incorporate it into daily life. I mean, if it’s a time crunch requiring a choice between exercising and Twittering or LinkedIn, I have to choose exercise.

Now, just as I think I have a handle on enough web-based technologies so as to feel current, I have heard about some new ones that I don’t grasp! I want to fit them neatly into some sort of mental genre folder. Help!

The scoop on Loopt.

Loopt’s website explains that it can “turn your mobile phone into a social compass.” It looks like a combination of Geocacheing (where people are the hidden items) and Twitter, but is not available to all cell phone users at this time.

Newsweek (“Hey, I Know Where U R,” May 5, 2008), featured an interview with its developer, Sam Altman, last week. Altman explains that “it’s amazing how often you’re near one of your friends and don’t actually know it.” Take the free tour/demo on the site and for just $3 or $4 per month, you can be in the loop(t). Read more about it at Wikipedia.

Genre: Mobile Social Mapping Application (according to CrunchBase)

Go fly a Brightkite :

Same idea as Loopt, but doesn’t require GPS and works with any and all cell phone carriers, as long as you have text messaging capabilities. The Brightkite blog explains, “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.” It integrates with Twitter and Fire Eagle (yes, another social networking option by Yahoo). Currently in beta, there’s no cost as yet.

Genre: Location-based Social Network (the preferred description per Brightkite’s site).

Ok, phew. That wasn’t so tough to understand after all. Just a new genre (to me) and something fun to try out, taking social networking to a new level. And it brings us full circle back to when all networking was done in person, and we enjoyed bumping into those we knew when running to the post office or grocery store.