Loopt, a Silicon Valley company that lets people interact on their cell-phones as they move around on a map, will now be available on Sprint.
Loopt lets users chat with each other and inform them of their moves around town — while bar-hopping for example — without having to send messages each time they move. Loopt automatically updates your location every 15 minutes, using GPS technology. Friends also using Loopt can check your location when they want. Other services require manual input of moves, and create quite a bit of spam because your friends get blasted by SMS updates each time you register a move. That’s likely one reason Google’s Dodgeball didn’t work out (see our comparison coverage from a year ago).
You can send messages that show your location. You can also share geo-tagged photos. The move is significant for the young Loopt, because until now it has been available only on Boost, a relatively small carrier owned by Sprint.
Cutting deals with carriers is excruciatingly painful. As an oligarchy, the major carriers protect their networks fiercely and are aggressive in looking for way to get paid. Loopt Chief Executive and founder Sam Altman told us nine months ago he was working on this and other carrier deals. He says other deals are still coming. The company says it has more than 100,000 users, though it isn’t clear how many of them are active. Sprint users will have to pay $2.99 a month for the service, another barrier to widespread adoption. Sprint would have been been wiser to offer Loopt for free, and cut some sort of revenue share on advertising. The service will be available on 25 different phones.
Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt yesterday wrote a column for VentureBeat talking about the state of the wireless industry, and why the latest plans by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to open up a part of the wireless spectrum aren’t good enough, and will keep power firmly in the hands of incumbents like Sprint.
Loopt is backed with $5 million from Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates. Verizon Wireless and AT&T are believed to have similar location-based social network products in the works.
One Comment
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Jonathan Salem Baskin said:
I think loopt and other services like it represent only the start of the development of brand benefits for mobile carriers far beyond the social mapping functionality…someday creating communities out of carrier networks that provide recommendations, referrals, and other services. I’m a little surprised that Sprint didn’t even bother to mention it, although the news wasn’t suited to YouTube sharing and the other useless endeavors that pass for viral branding these days. I’ve written about this in some detail on my blog, DIM BULB, at http://dimbulb.typepad.com,if you’d like to check it out. Thanks!
5 Trackbacks
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[...] Source: VentureBeat [...]
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[...] Loopt lets friends share their location and status with each other, send messages based on proximity to each other, and view photos and other information tagged according to geographic location. It uses the GPS capability of some Sprint phones to automatically updates a user’s location every 15 minutes (our previous coverage). [...]
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[...] troubles could delay its ambitious WiMax project with Google. Mobile social mapping service Loopt (our coverage), one of the few startups that has managed to land a distribution deal with Sprint, tells us the [...]
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[...] also recently announced a partnership with the mobile carrier Sprint. Verizon Wireless has backed it as [...]