Mobile presence application Loopt has launched its service tonight. Loopt uses GPS and related data to display the location of a user’s friends along with their presence status (available, away, etc) on maps and lists. Users will be able to request alerts when friends are within a certain distance, send messages to groups of friends within a certain distance and soon will be able to tag and blog physical locations in a way that’s accesible to friends through Loopt. The service is initially available only to Boost Mobile customers.
The company received early funding from Paul Graham’s YCombinator and $5 million in series A from NEA and Sequoia. It has been known previously as Radiate and Flipt.
The future of computing is definitely going to be heavily impacted by hand held mobile devices, so show me something that resembles IM, mobile blogging and group SMS mashed up and I’m interested. I can definitely imagine going downtown to work at a coffee shop, requesting notification if any of my friends came within a few miles of me and having all the more access to the people I know and want to spend time with. There may well come a day when passing near someone important to us, both of us carrying a GPS enabled device in our pockets, and not being aware of each other’s proximity seems absurd.
Loopt includes a Java mobile client and an ajax access point for non-mobile browser use. The company has formed a partnership with youth targeted Boost Mobile, a pay-as-you-go Sprint/Nextel subsidiary, to offer a service called Boost Loopt free for the rest of this year and as a $2.99 monthly add-on service beginning in January. Loopt hopes to expand to more networks soon.
The difference between Loopt and the now Google owned Dodgeball is that Dodgeball is text-message based and seems far less smooth an experience. Another player to watch in this space is Jaiku, which appears to be limited for now to Nokia Series 60 Second Edition phones.
Do I want other people to know where I am by tracking my phone? Too late. Do I want to be able to use that information for my own purposes? You’d better believe it. Do I have any faith that such information would be protected from intrusion by unwelcome parties? Not today and not with the launch of Loopt; it’s just a (smart) UI making the data that’s already available functional for my friends and I. SMS has been a global force for years now, mobile presence could well be the next stage.
In semi-related mobile news, PaidContent is reporting that Newscorp has bought 51% of Verisign’s mobile content network Jamba for $187.5 million.
Hasn’t Sam Altman already done this..been there..?
There are a few companies that have been doing this for a while now. I like the idea but I REALLY am concerned with the degree of privacy that I could be offered. Let me paint you a scenario:
My mate comes over and I ask “can I borrow your phone for just a minute” – I sign up to the service, get the text message confirming that I want the phone to be tracked then I delete it. Now the tracking is working – he takes off and I can see his every move on a map?
Despite the fact that mobile tracking is definitely a great thing and an alternative to GPS – it does have serious privacy issues. Furthermore, allowing this content to be freely available online? Come on, you have got to be joking. Even restricting this to a “private group of friends” is a serious matter for concern – what’s to say one of my friend’s password is really easy to crack and his ‘axe murder friend’ knows it. Now they can access the service and know where I am every minute of the day.
Although I am sure that there are “regular random sms message sent at periodic intervals to the phone” to confirm with the phone owner they want to be tracked, there is a period where I have already been tracking my friend without his knowledge. Give me some more answers to these questions, and I might be interested, until then – I’m happy with my mates just calling me.
This is a development that is both exciting and scary. We get so wired that our privacy may suffer. Let’s just hope that when people take advantage of these tech developments, they put it to good use.
Startups – this is Sam Altman’s company, formerly known as flipt, rebranding now at launch.
Radiate used to be called Aureate and were a major spyware/adware maker. They changed the name to Radiate because they wanted to escape their former reputation as spyware maker.
Eek, well I suppose if that’s true then at least there’s a consistent trend of knowing who and where you are! We’ll see what the company has to say about your comment.
Very good dissection, Tcruncher2. Would be interesting to see loopt’s response.
Also, it might help a bit if there is a way to create predefined profiles (ex: profile1-family members, profile2-friends only, profile3-public etc.) and be able to easily switch profiles. Currently, it just seems to be a binary thing, all or none.
Nothing is more important to us than the safety of the service. Every decision we make starts and ends with a discussion how best to protect the privacy and safety of our users.
For example, the post-signup message that Tcruncher2 mentioned is delivered at a random interval between 3 and 24 hours after you sign up, making it difficult for someone to surreptitiously install loopt.
And loopt really is private. You have to know a users’ phone number to invite them to be your friend. You can’t just browse to their profile or search by name and then issue a request—in fact, you can’t contact someone in anyway on loopt unless you know their phone number. We also show you someone’s phone number when we ask you to confirm their invitation, and in order to sign up you have to verify your phone number. And, of course, you can turn off location sharing for everyone or for individual friends at any time. Startups, this is easy to change at the individual level on both the phone and the web.
Keep an eye on our blog in the new few weeks for some of the cool things we’ve done on the backend along these lines.
Thanks for taking the time to express your concerns and please continue to do so. We’d love feedback on anything else we can to make loopt safe and secure. We’ve all found using loopt to be a great way to stay in touch, and we hope you’ll check it out.
Sidenote:
Jason, there is no connection between us and the Radiate that used to be called Aureate, although that’s an unfortunate coincidence! We loved the name Radiate but couldn’t get the domain; we got flipt but it turned out someone else was using a very similar name; and now we’re happily loopt. We hate adware with burning passion.
does this require an external GPS unit, also which phones are supported?
it looks like a great mobile application though
I don’t understand where the revenue stream is- are they planning on selling advertising on the main site?
I’m curious about the additional costs from Boost while using this service. The website says that you do not need a data plan for loopt, so I assume they are not going to charge you per kilobyte of data. However, do you need to purchase the GPS service? Last I checked that was another 6 dollars a month.
I looks like a great app. I don’t quite understand where the revenue stream is- will it be ads on the website and on the cell phone? Surely each location request must cost loopt money. Certainly here in the UK a location request is about 10p (20c ish).
checked out the site and looks good – but what I dont get it was mobile phones you support?
marshall says you have a “java application” – but it doesnt say anywhere what mobiles this will work on?
A NY-based company called mologogo has been doing something similar for over a year. MAKE and others have written up how you could use it to track your kids and pets and cars for really cheap. It works with all GPS enabled Nextel phones which you can get with a limited data package for really very little money. They’ve got a downloadable Java-based Google map for the phone that can let you track your friends or whatever. It’s pretty slick without VC funding or any real money. For some reason the site appears to be down right now, but I’m sure the service is still available. http://www.mologogo.com
it only works in USA?
As more and more of these types of services become available, I can’t help but wonder if we aren’t moving closer and closer to a ubiquitous tracking network of friends, family and others.
Someday, everyone will know your exact location at all times. Big Brother is the least of your worries. You had better be paying attention to all the wired Little Brothers. LOL
I think WaveMarket (www.wavemarket.com) has been providing a similar app for a while now.
This is interesting. Sort of a catch-22.
One the one hand, this is a sweet little app. On my Nextel we had an app called MapQuest FindMe (I think that was the name, it could have been a different app all toghether, not really positive) and it did a similar thing. Once authorized, it would allow you see exactly where your friends were. It was an option for the other person to be alerted when you tried to find them
On the other hand, who wants to be found? I certainly do not. if I want someone to know where I am then I am going to tell them! When I am home, they can catch me on AIM, E-mail me, call me, or just show up at the house. When I am out, it is sorta like freedom! Now they can find me. Ut oh
That is such a great idea. It’s always annoying when you find out after the fact that a friend was right down the road. The only concern I have is privacy. Would each person added to an individual’s network have to approve it first?
is there any point to this service whatsoever? If I want to meet up with a friend, I will text/call him. If I am busy and want to be left alone, then I won’t contact anyone. I don’t need my phone to automatically do this for me (unless my phone can read my thoughts and tell when I want to be left alone). How annoying when you’re at a meeting, on a date or something and you get 14 text messages “Hey dude! I’m 2 blocks away! Comin’ to see ya!”
In the words of Vincent Ferrari. “Cancel. The. Subscription.”
I agree with cg. Technology is good when it is useful.
For me, it is useless.
I can see this being useful in a college scenario. I wish they had this when I was in college (6 years ago). Aside from college / other kids using this, I don’t see the point.
The revenue stream will be parents paying for their kids to have this on their cell phones!
There are a lot of kids who have a lot of spare time. For them, this technology will catch on like wildfire, just like stuff like MySpace does.
Used this service for a month or so 6 months ago, recent college grad living in an urban setting. the service still had a few glitches and i probably didn’t take full advantage of all of its services, but with three roommates, it was extremely useful to be able to find out where my friends whether i was hanging out at home on the weekend or coming home from work during the week.
and despite all the claims that it’s just a spying tool, you can ODDLY ENOUGH turn off the service without turning off your phone whenever you want or not allow specific people to see where you are. bottom line, imagine yourself planning to meet up with 5 or 6 friends at a bar and you wanna know if everyone’s gonna get there on time or whatever. instead of texting or calling all 5 of your buddies, you can see where everyone is on one map and know exactly where they all are, and that’s just the bare bones of the service. although i didn’t take full advantage of the service at the time, i found myself missing it when it was gone.
as a comment to add to john (September 12th, 2006 at 11:33 am), i used the service in a private beta-test before it was open to the public
The End of Infidelity ???
This is one of those things where you think Oh that is sooo cool…but then you think it through for a few seconds – how many people do you really want to know exactly where you are, all – I mean *all* – the time?
Switching it off stops becoming an option when people are expected to have it on 24/7 by all thoese high intimacy people significant others, dull but worthy friends, nosy relatives, workaholioc bosses and so on….it will soon become suffocating. And thats never mind governments….
As far as I can see from past evidence, tech that tracks movements and makes it visible to others has tended so far to do well as child safety plays or when forced by employers but has had limited takeup with adults when it meddles in their….ahem…affairs. (Unless it facilitates those affairs like some i-Mode services do of course……).
To be fair this service abstracts presence in a few ways, mainly as theer is a a very thin client – but you can see the rest of the wedge that is coming.
Presence is going to be one of the major human interface issues to solve over the next few years.
Where I think this one will work well is for fairly loose social networks where people can click in when they want to, and opt out when they don’t – ie mainly young people or special interest social networks. As such, this mainly seems like a 14-24 year olds demographic thingy to me as it stands.
When mobile co’s have looked at this before, apparently one of the things that has worried them is the first rape or paedo scare (and it will come), and the impact on the business. I think it will really be a tread with care area.
i was a loopt beta user (back in the flipt days) a few months ago before it went public, and i used it daily. i consider myself a good target user base for loopt: i’m in my mid-twenties, work an 8-5 job and i go out in an urban area every weekend. during the week, my location didn’t change much: home, work, home. i still found myself sucked in to checking my phone every few hours to see my friends’ updated status (which could be similarly done on myspace or facebook) but having the location feature just made it so much more intriguing. it was simply entertaining and fun to live vicariously through the location of my friends.
when it became truly useful and awesome was on the weekends. driving into the city to meet up with friends became so much easier as loopt allowed for a different kind of communication, making my social outings more flexible and navigable. especially in a big city where there are always new places to meet up and check out.
right after the beta test ended and i had to hand in my phone, i took a weekend trek to the beach with 8 of my friends. we were going to a beach that we had never been to before so we tried to caravan. we, of course, got separated after 5 minutes of stop and go freeway traffic. 40 minutes later and after poor directions from the internet, four of us were at one end of the beach and the other four were at an adjacent beach. the beach was huge and packed. trying to describe to each other our locations over the phone was a frustrating experience that totally killed the beach vibe. i needed loopt, but the damn beta test had ended.
privacy seemed to be the concern when i showed it off to others, but having my friends know my location was just my way of being broadcasted. loopt became my mobile blog with gps. setting my status or turning on/off my location made it easy for me to not worry about being interrupted by an over-zealous friend. maybe loopt is not for everyone, but it gave me a fun forum to interact with the friends i’m close with and friends i’m close to.
There were a bunch of great posts raising important questions about the service’s privacy and security. Location information is very sensitive, and we want to give users full control over how they use it and who they share it with. We’ve made it easy and intuitive to toggle sharing ON and OFF for individual friends from the web, your mobile app, or even by calling our customer service, and as far as we know, we’re the first service ever to allow for individual control of location sharing. The current version of the service doesn’t allow for predefined profiles as suggested by “Startups.in/India,” but it’s a great suggestion.
loopt’s all about making it easier to keep in touch with friends, and we wanted to make sure that location sharing was simple so that users could focus on what makes our service exciting and useful– real-time location sharing, setting status messages on the go, proximity-based messaging. We hope to allow you to stay in touch with the world around you wherever you are. It’s a vision that excites us, but we’ll never compromise your safety or privacy to get there.
Thanks again for all of the thoughtful comments…keep them coming.
Side note:
loopt is currently only available in the US on Boost Mobile. It is free until 2007 and $2.99 a month beginning in January. One of the reasons we’re excited about launching with Boost is that all of their phones have GPS. If you have a Java-enabled Boost phone, or buy any of their new phones, we’re supported. More coverage is coming soon. We hope that answers some of your questions about the service.
I got Loopt as soon as it became available. It has amazing graphics, the proper security and some cool features such as making events and having a live profile with a pic. I can’t wait to see what else these guys come out with in the future. I now have a new toy on my phone. Great job to Evan and his team. There were a lot of people shooting down Loopt. It wasn’t well known and people thought it was a fraud. I was one of those that signed up for the service when I heard about it and asked a few questions. If you have Boost Mobile then I suggest you get this and use it as much as you can. Again, great job to Evan and his team.
i’m in college and this sounds like a dork did it, useless
How is this different from plazes with mobile component?
Sure, this will be great for some highschool/college kids.
Mot relevant use case in my mind = between spouses. My wife and I call each other several times a day just to know where the other one is to coordinate. I’ll pay $3 or $6 or $10 a month to know. Oh… wifey is at Costco? Text her to pick up some milk.
Why pay for a service like this when there are free offerings out there like Mologogo? I’ve been using it on my Windows Mobile phone for the past 6 months and it even worked while I was holidaying in England.
imagine a sexoffender geo fence loopt instant alert.
You look at your phone and theres the picture profile of your neighbor. Then you look over and hes just across the street watering his lawn smiling at you.
i love your site,
i need a caring and lovely lady for life term relationship
my contact Cel Phone is +2348055821024
Now I know exactly where the people I need to whack are hiding! Thanks loopt for making my job much easier.