Loopt In

CNN Interview - Sam on the iPad: "It's Portable Enough"

Sam was interviewed by CNN Money this week discussing the iPad and demoing the new Loopt Pulse app for the iPad. Although you can't put it in your pocket, Sam sees the iPad as a game-changer in location-based services.

Click on the image below to watch the full video.

Apple's OS 4.0 Announcements - Loopt's Perspective

We're really excited about the Apple OS 4.0 announcements today.

This will mean that we can bring the full Loopt experience to our iPhone users so you know what's going on around you right now, where your friends are, and what they're doing without having to even launch the app.

Two years ago, at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, we said that Loopt makes serendipity happen. Serendipity is all about accidental discovery. That can mean finding out that a friend is eating at a nearby restaurant, but it also means unexpectedly receiving an alert that an old friend is sitting in the airport two gates away from you waiting for her flight. Or telling you when a cool event is happening that you've told us you're interested in.

Loopt has offered these features on many of our devices for a long time, and our users love it. We can now plan to bring the full Loopt experience to the iPhone as well, and our users can expect to see it the moment OS 4.0 ships this summer.

What's really important in all this is keeping the user in control. We allow our users a "hybrid" model of Check Ins and background updates, and this is the model we'll adopt for our iPhone users too.  That is, you might Check In and tell many friends exactly where you are right now (optionally posting to Facebook and Twitter). But for a smaller subset of friends and family, you can choose to keep them informed all the time about where you are without having to Check In or even launch the app. And you always have full privacy control.

We're really excited about what this is going to mean for our iPhone users. We look forward to hearing what you think too! Please comment here, or visit the Help section on our site.

Loopt Q&A @SXSW with Sam Altman

Nice Q&A about the latest version of Loopt for the iPhone and iPod touch by Jay Donovan of CrunchGear when we were at SXSW. To see the entire article, go to CrunchGear. Here's the video.  Jay apologizes for the shaky-cam. But hey, it's real!

The Life Graph: You Are Your Location

Loopt's CEO and Co-Founder, Sam Altman, appears in the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital today writing about the Life Graph. Sam offers insights into the future of location-based services and how your Life Graph can surface applicable content to you, our users, to make the the service we build more useful: 

"There’s a lot of attention being focused on location-based services and mobile social networks right now, and for good reason. These applications represent the future of social media. They’re expanding our circle of friends online and offline. They’re changing how we meet people. They’re affecting where we go and why. They’re forging important connections between our online networks and real life..."

Read the rest of the article here. 

Sam will be joined by a panel of individuals at the forefront of location-based services field to discuss the Life Graph at SXSW this Monday, March 15. If you’re going to SXSW, get more details on the panel and RSVP to join the discussion here. 

Check In for Haiti – It’s Your Turn, Macworld

Last week, we asked you to help people affected by the earthquake in Haiti by checking in to a Whole Foods, Chipotle Grill, or Panera Bread retail location. We promised to donate $1 for each such Check In, and as a result, we saw Check Ins at these location rise 200% from their norm. Thanks so much for your help, guys!

Macworld: now it’s your turn! Check In to Macworld at the Moscone Center from now until midnight on February 13, and we will donate $1 to victims of the earthquake in Haiti on your behalf. The funds will go to the American Red Cross as well as Doctors Without Borders.

There is no charge to the Loopt user. You can share your Check Ins with friends by linking Loopt to your Facebook and Twitter profiles.

If you'd like more information about donating to the Red Cross' Haiti Relief and Development Fund, click here; to learn more about how you can help Doctors Without Borders, click here.

Mella Media Wins Best Mobile Campaign with Loopt

The partnership between Loopt and Mella Media delivered the honor of, “Best Mobile Campaign – 2009” at the DPAC Awards on Tuesday night. For its client, B.R. Guest Restaurants, Mella Media engaged Loopt to deploy the hyperlocal mobile campaign. 

“It was exciting for us to match our client’s business goals to the right mobile platform. Location-based advertising has been promised in the mobile industry for over a decade, and Loopt has delivered the engaging platform that makes this a reality,” said Jordan Greene, Principal/Mobile Media for Mella Media. 

The campaign won the coveted mobile prize amongst other digital categories won by American Express OPEN, Coca Cola, and Ogilvy. 

The campaign running in New York City presents the Loopt community with exclusive offers from the closest of B.R. Guest’s 15 restaurants including Dos Caminos, Ruby Foos, and Blue Water Grill. With a simple tap, the consumer can call the restaurant, connect to view the menu, map its location, or find the fastest route to get there.

  

Loopt Holiday Scavenger Crawl: Play in LA, NY, or SF

Time to give yourself a Holiday from the Holidays! Join a Holiday Scavenger Crawl of massive proportions - it’s part pub crawl, part urban scavenger hunt. Armed with the new Loopt application on your phone, you will join fellow players in Los Angeles (Sat., 12/12), New York (Sat., 12/19), and San Francisco (Sat., 1/2) scurrying from speakeasies to swanky galleries to coffee shops, solving clues, engaging with secret agents, and racing against the clock to win cool prizes and locate the VIP party of the season.

All you have to do is download the new, free Loopt application for your iPhone, iPod touch, or Blackberry and sign up to play here. Get a free Loopt t-shirt if you’re among the first 500 to sign up!

Consider this the cure for the unending drone of Holiday muzak, 50% off sales and grandma’s bundt cake. Instead, we’ll feature Carnival Dancers, love letters from Cupid, and dandelion weavings around the May Pole. And, all the while, you’ll get to meet up with fellow Loopt denizens on an escapade through the hotspots of a city you only think you know.

Go here to sign up to play »

Find a Date with Loopt Mix

Current TV's Ben Hoffman uses Loopt Mix to find a date.  Watch and see if he finds true love or is back to the drawing board... 

Have you used Loopt Mix to find a date?  Let us know!  We love entertaining Loopt Mix stories.

Top 25

We've been working hard here at Loopt and we're proud to see that we've made it to the Top 25 on the iPhone App Store.  Here's a cool graph, courtesy of Mybefia, that compares Loopt's rankings to other iPhone apps, Facebook and MySpace.  Sweet upward slope, huh?

Location, Location, Location

Location is one of most genuine parts of the mobile experience. And the mobile phone remains the most ubiquitous, always on device that is capable of knowing where you are automatically and delivering innovative, compelling location-based services. Loopt obviously feels location is a core part of the experience and continues to strive to deliver high frequency, high accuracy location to the Loopt mobile social mapping experience. However, there are still a number of barriers preventing broader adoption of LBS apps, such as API accessibility and the cost of location. We are excited to be working closely with Qualcomm and some of our carrier partners to be addressing these challenges. There are over 100M+ devices in the US alone that are capable of high-accuracy, rich LBS services. These location capabilities will continue to extend into more of the mobile web and mobile UI.

We are thrilled to make this announcement today with Qualcomm.  Stay tuned for additional news as we continue working to enhance the Loopt user experience and drive growth in the broader LBS market.
 
For more information, please contact Eric Carr, VP of location technologies, at [email protected].