Track friend activity by location with Zkout

Zkout, a location-based mobile social network has just released a new version that integrates both Twitter and Yahoo's Fire Eagle. The service, which first demonstrated its technology at last year's Le Web 3 conference in Paris, enables anyone with a compatible handset to write notes, take pictures, and chat with others based on where they are.

Not unlike competitors Brightkite, Loopt, and the now-defunct Meetro, the goal of Zkout is to discover and interact with people around you no matter where you are. However the big difference is that Zkout is remaining platform agnostic, and will work on almost any handset as long as it's got a data connection.

The service experienced a mass of new users earlier this year after being listed as a staff pick in Apple's Web app directory. In addition to the Fire Eagle and Twitter integration, it's also now optimized for both the iPhone and Blackberry. Christian Wiklund, the co-founder of Zkout, tells me a native iPhone application will be out later this year that takes advantage of the phone's camera and integrated GPS to improve the accuracy of where members are.