iPhone Invite Confusion

Hi all,

A couple of folks have recently blogged that Loopt automatically spams your contacts with invites. We wanted to let everyone know that 1) we apologize for the confusion and unintended invites and 2) this issue has been fixed.

Just so you know, here is what happened:

When you clicked the “Who’s on Loopt” button, all of your contacts that are current Loopt users were auto-selected to receive invites. A total count of people receiving invites appeared at the bottom of the screen. However, we have since disabled that functionality due to customer feedback and confusion. We are working on an improved invite flow that will include an invite confirmation screen that will be released very soon.

Again, our bad completely. We hope you’ll continue to use Loopt – and provide us with feedback.  If you have any further concerns or questions, please don't hesitate to email (support@loopt.com) us.

Thanks!
Loopt

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Update, July 16, 2008: Hi guys, an update from Sam about invites. Please follow the link below and let us know if you have any questions.

Sorry, everyone. Our bad.

We’ve received a lot of feedback over the past few days regarding the new Loopt friend-invitation process. Loopt takes privacy and user feedback very seriously, and we are especially sensitive to doing anything that makes our users unhappy.

The Loopt team has been working around the clock to respond to these issues, gather input and improve the Loopt service as quickly as possible. Thanks for letting us know what you do and don’t like.

Yesterday, we started hearing that people were unhappy with the way we sent invites to current Loopt users already in your phonebook. If a user clicked the "Who's on Loopt button", we checked his or her phone book for other Loopt users. The mistake we made was automatically selecting them, so if the user then hit Send, they might inadvertently send more invites than they meant to. We immediately disabled that feature. We don’t store your contact list, and it should go without saying we would never sell it or share it with a third party.

We now have a much better invite process. It’s beginning our testing process now and will be available soon. We’ve included a screenshot so you can see how it works.

With the first option, users can send an invitation text by directly entering the number of someone he/she knows.  The second option allows you to see which of your contacts are already on Loopt, on a Loopt-supported carrier, or on a non-Loopt supported carrier.  None of the contacts are automatically selected.  If the friend is already on Loopt, the application allows you to send a friend request to him/her.  The third option simply allows you to view your contact list without any Loopt labels about whether or not they are on Loopt or on a Loopt-supported carrier.  As with option two, you select the contacts to whom you want to send text invites.

Finally, many people that don’t want Loopt have written that they’d like to stop receiving invitations to the service from their friends. Loopt itself never initiates an SMS to you, but if you don’t want to get any from your friends either, we’ve made it even easier to let us know you never want another SMS from us—just send STOP to any Loopt-related message you get. As always, you can email us at privacy@loopt.com and we’ll take care of it.

Thank you again for your feedback and please keep it coming. We hope you will continue to use Loopt.  And thanks also to the people who write to let us know how much they love the service.  For more information about Loopt’s privacy practices, please visit http://www.loopt.com/about/privacy-security. If you have more questions, I’d love to hear them. Please drop me a note at altman@loopt.com .

Sorry again,
Sam

Comments

Loopt said:

> all of your contacts that are current Loopt users were auto-selected to receive invites

This may be an accurate explanation of one oversight, but it doesn't get to the deeper problem Loopt is receiving complaints about.

First, people (like me) who **never registered for Loopt** have received SMS invites from Loopt users, via Loopt's shortcode, with Loopt's branding. Second, the reports that I see indicate that -- despite industry standards to the contrary -- Loopt's SMS service is not responding to `STOP`. That's at least two different problems from what's addressed here.

While your post is a welcome start to beginning to sort this all out, the explanation you provided is either incomplete or is not addressing the bigger problems.

There's much more information about these issues in Loopt's own Get Satisfaction area (http://getsatisfaction.com/loopt/topics/how_can_i_never_receive_another_loopt_sms_invitation_ever) that should help the company track down the rogue functionalities that have generated so much frustration.

[luca]

Great to read this.

[Mark]

Who at Loopt thought this was a really good idea, and why has that person not been fired twice over?

[Nick]

It seems that locations that I have saved on my web based version of Loopt do not sync to the iPhone. Is this a glitch or are you planning on adding this feature? When loopt'ing from places such as home and work I'd like it to identify that.

[Min]

Sam has posted an update about invites here: http://loopt.typepad.com/loopt/2008/07/sorry-everyone.html

Again, apologies for this mistake of ours, and if you have specific questions, please address them on our GetSatisfaction site: http://www.getsatisfaction.com/loopt.

Min, on behalf of Loopt

[Spy Phone]

im running into the same invite confusion as others here.... but despite the confusion, this is a real cool app..