Surging on an iPhone commercial, Loopt looking to sell or raise money?
It looks as if Loopt may be looking for an out — or more likely, an insane new round of funding. The location-based social network for mobile devices has supposedly hired the investment band Allen & Co. to find a potential sale or investment partner, TechCrunch is reporting.
But what’s crazy is the apparent valuation Allen & Co. is putting Loopt at: Over $500 million. Now, I like Loopt as much as the next guy, and… Continue Reading
Brightkite finally launches its iPhone app. Could this be the one that launches LBS?
Location-based services (LBS) are becoming a dime-a-dozen in Apple’s App Store. Some, such as UrbanSpoon, Yelp and AroundMe are quite useful and popular. But those simply focus on finding places and activities (and mainly food) nearby your current location. More complex LBS social networks, which focus on tracking you and your friends, haven’t yet caught fire. Brightkite, which just launched its iPhone app, has the potential to change that.
The LBS social networks like Loopt, Where… Continue Reading
Facebook 2.0 for the iPhone, tastes more like regular Facebook
As promised, Facebook has rolled out a new, more robust iPhone application. Version 2.0 brings many of the features that are found on the regular Internet-based version of the social network, but had been lacking in the first few iPhone iterations.
Included in the update are: Notifications, the full News Feed, people search, friend requests, photo tagging, photo captioning, full Mini-Feeds, inbox search and message attachments. The update also promises to be more stable and run… Continue Reading
Lloyd! Whrrl adds you to Entourage’s entourage
As more location-based services come out, one definite problem I’ve been experiencing is a lack of membership. That is to say, most of them work great, but no one I know really uses them, making them fairly useless. Whrrl, the location-based social network has a new feature today that may up its adoption.
The service had teamed up with Deep Focus which handles the marketing for the cable television channel HBO to promote the hit show… Continue Reading
Stalking your friends could be big business. $3.3 billion location-based social network economy by 2013?
While even the popular social networks nowadays aren’t making that much money (Facebook expects to make $350 million in revenues this year), the burgeoning field of mobile social networks could be big business shortly, a new report by ABI Research indicates. Specifically, location-based mobile social networks could earn revenues of $3.3 billion within five years.
This is great news for many of the location-based mobile networks out there now such as Whrrl, Loopt, Where and Plazes…. Continue Reading
Loopt opens a lead with location-based service on smartphones
updated
Loopt, the cellphone service that lets you track your friends on a map and communicate with them, said it is now also available on RIM’s BlackBerry Curve, Pearl and World devices.
This makes Loopt the third location-based service (LBS) to be available on the majority of U.S. smartphones, but arguably lets it open a lead over competitors Whrrl and Brightkite in this segment. I’ve illustrated the competitive field with one of my napkin drawings below. You’ll… Continue Reading
Roundup: A longtime Yahoo employee leaves, speculation that Loopt beat out Whrrl for WWDC keynote position and more
Here’s the latest action:
Another long time Yahoo employee departs — Jeremy Zawodny, a programmer who had been with the company since 1999, is moving on to a unnamed smaller company. Zawodny helped launch the Yahoo Developer Network and worked on several internal projects for the company. In his blog post on the topic, Zawodny points out that his departure is completely unrelated to the failed Microsoft takeover and now the Carl Icahn takeover bid. He follows… Continue Reading
Location, location, location: The iPhone with GPS nears
There’s smoke, there’s fire, and then there’s a volcano the size of Olympus Mons on Mars erupting and turning the ground into an ocean of burning lava. Such is current state of speculation surrounding the 3G iPhone.
There’s really no point in beating around the bush at this point. The new iPhone is coming on Monday. You know it. I know it. We all know it. If Apple were not to announce it at this point, it… Continue Reading
Pelago raises $15 million to expand Whrrl both in the U.S. and abroad
Social networks built around location are a hot item, and getting hotter.
It’s one thing to have a group of contacts which you can update with words from a mobile device (think the micro-messaging service Twitter). It’s another to be able to quickly update your exact location on a map and have others see it. Add to that the ability to review places (think: Yelp) as well as tag places you would like to go, and… Continue Reading