Loopt: Another Mobile Contender
Loopt is the third location aware mobile social network to become available for the majority of U.S. smartphones . It joins fellow competitors Whrrl and Brightkite, both of which have already started to gain traction (see our coverage of Brightkite here). However, this is not a market where the first one to debut on the smartphone will be the ultimate winner. Instead, in the wild west of the mobile social networks, the key will be adoption. This is an area where Loopt is making headway, having recently announced deals with all the major U.S. carriers and support for Blackberry smartphones.
About Loopt
Loopt actually launched back in 2006 after receiving funding from YCombinator as well as Series A from NEA and Sequioa. Back then, it was only available to Boost Mobile customers as a Java mobile client. In 2007, Loopt added Sprint Nextel to their list of carriers. However, it was this year when Loopt really started to grow, announcing more deals and a developers program which provides access to Loopt's APIs for building location-aware applications.
Today, Loopt has deals with all major U.S. carriers, including AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Alltel, and Boost Mobile. Although some networks support more phones than others, Loopt has made a smart move by not ignoring the other big smartphone out there - the Blackberry. Loopt now works on Blackberry phones on Sprint, Alltel, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
In addition to Blackberry support, Loopt works with a handful of other popular phones, like Sprint's Razr and Razr2, but the big news of late was the reveal of the new Loopt app for the 3G iPhone which was featured during Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote.
How It Works
Like other location-based mobile social networks, Loopt lets you share your location, status, and photos with everyone on the service or just with your friends. A built-in mapping application shows you where your friends are and what they're doing. To send out updates, you can either use your Loopt friend list or use AIM, thanks to included integration with that instant messaging service.
As you move around, Loopt uses GPS to automatically update your location and status - a feature that some people (usually those in the older generation) find a little disconcerting. For additional privacy, this location updating feature can be set to "manual" mode instead. Of course, you're in control of who gets to "spy" on you - if you don't want to be stalked by unknown strangers, then you simply don't friend them.
A Loopt Map
The Problem With Loopt
Despite all the new Blackberry phones supported, there are still several models that aren't yet able to use Loopt. (My T-Mobile Pearl would be one of them). Of course, there are also tons of "regular" phones that are unsupported, too. Meanwhile, the service has to compete with other mobile social networks, like Brightkite for example, where the only barrier to entry is the ability to use SMS.
For Loopt, some questions remain: can a mobile social network really succeed if only a limited number of phones are supported? Can Loopt succeed if they only focus on smartphones?
Maybe, maybe not...but then again, it could be that Loopt is just betting on the fact that in year or so from now after everyone's contracts run out, we'll all just be using iPhones anyway. Because really, that Loopt app for iPhone is pretty hot:
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> not ignoring the other big smartphone out there - the Blackberry
Eh, the hundreds of millions Nokia S60 devices isn't enough to put it into the top-2 in your list? Already last year:
http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1121530
(note: I work for Nokia)
Yeah, I fully understand the age-old fact that the US market shares are pretty strange compared with the other parts of the world (S60 is almost absent there), but still... Just curious, is your RWW reader base mostly US based, or is it global?
> can a mobile social network really succeed if
> only a limited number of phones are supported
Now, we are talking. This is a seriously good question...
I am extremely curious how they legally and technically circumvented Apple's no background apps restriction on the iPhone.
Loopt claims to work on all BlackBerry smartphones, but I've tried to download it on my AT&T Pearl and it's not working. They need to be a little more clearer in their press release. It's really annoying!
Loopt is another daft useless social networking application. Again, can anyone list the benefits of using loopt. Err! Don't list being able to see your friends in nearby location, since it is a useless piece of info to know about. I want proponent to list things that are life changing or perhaps increase productive life, etc,...
Sarah Perez said...
location aware mobile...
Sarah, I doubt that Loopt is location aware at all. Location-aware means that the device is aware of its location, then act/response autonomously accordingly to that environment. Loopt is more like tracking but it doesn't have the awareness capability at all. Location-awareness is autonomous while location-tracking is non-autonomous. Location-awareness has a knowledge-base (ie, either a static or a learning & dynamic expert system) to infer information from (by using autonomous software agents), while location tracking relies on just traditional SQL database. So, Loopt and the likes should be labeled as location tracking rather than location awareness, because the 2 are different.
I will post an example (useful one) of what location-awareness is about in my next one.
Here is an interesting illustrative scenario of the application of mobile context/location awareness services in health care which I have cut & paste from the following paper (see link below). Also , the paper is useful for those who are interested in developing application in mobile location/context awareness market. There are a few peer review journals available today that are dedicated to publishing researches in this area, just Google for them.
Context-aware mobile agents for decision-making support in healthcare emergency applications
The full PDF paper can be downloaded, however this is just a section that I am repasting below , so to highlight what's the difference between useful location awareness application such as this example, and the useless location tracking application such as Loopt and the likes, which they're just passing fads.
Illustrative Scenario :
To illustrate the agent-based application model employing a sample scenario. Consider a situation in which a middle-age man suffers from a cardiac arrest while on his way to work. The on-lookers immediately call 000 providing details such as the location of the patient, the nature of the accident, along with some form of identification (ID) and if possible a name (we assume that the patient will have some form of ID such as a driving license or a medical insurance card on him). The dispatch centre then relays this information to the most appropriate ambulatory service, which promptly dispatches an ambulance to the scene. The paramedics use the dashboard-mounted terminal on the ambulance to filter out the group of hospitals that are in close proximity to the patient’s location. They also key in the available details such as ID/name, gender and type of treatment required. Once this is done, the paramedics use the travel time to the accident scene to launch two mobile agent assistants. These agents use the data entered by the paramedics to autonomously and asynchronously traverse the various nodes of the network to carry out specific information retrieval tasks on behalf of the paramedics. Finally they collaborate their results and present it to the user in a transparent manner. We call out first mobile agent as the ‘hospital assistant’. This agent is tasked to retrieve the latest resource details form the list of hospitals assigned to it. As mentioned, paramedics’ shortlist a group of hospitals based on the patient’s location (they may not do this in which case the agent will visit all hospitals in the city irrespective of their distance form the scene of accident). Each hospital is essentially a node in our distributed medical environment. Once launched, the mobile assistant uses the list of hospitals it was assigned and migrates to each of the hospitals one by one. When it arrives at a destination hospital node it interacts locally with the stationary hospital agent to retrieve the latest resource consumptions details for the hospital. As part of its interaction with the stationary agent the assistant acquires information about 1) Facility type offered by the hospital (24-Hr Emergency Centre, Cardiology Ward etc.) 2) Total number of doctors present 3) Number of doctors available to attend patient at present 4) Total number of nurses present 5) Number of nurses available to attend patient at present 6) Total number of beds at the hospital 7) Number of beds available. After receiving the requested information, the assistant then visits the next hospital on the list and repeats its request. It keeps doing this till it reaches the last hospital on its list. Upon completion the agent moves back to the ambulance to relay its results.
While the hospital assistant retrieves the latest resource utilization details from various hospitals, the second mobile agent, which we refer to as the ‘data assistant’ simultaneously retrieves the patient’s medical history along with the latest route status for the selected hospitals. Based on the patient’s ID details, the data assistant travels to a central medical repository (Medical Archives) interacts with the stationary archive assistant and acquires the medical details of the patient along with his past medical history. As part of the of the patients details the assistant acquires the 1) Name of the patient 2) Health insurance number (if available) 3) Driving license number (if available) 4) Address details 5) Known drug allergies. As part of the patients medical history the assistant acquires information about 1) Hospital/Clinic visited by the patient 2) Date of visit 3) Details of visit (medical procedures performed etc.) 4) Name of physician attended. It is important to note that for our scenario we assume that every individual has a unique identifier (ID) that is used to tag all his medical related details. If no ID details were entered by the paramedic (or were not available in the first place) the data assistant automatically skips going to the archive node and migrates directly to the road authority website for the latest situation on roads leading to each of the selected hospitals. After retrieving the relevant patient details and the necessary road updates, the agent moves back to the ambulance to relay this information. However, before both the hospital assistant and the data assistant publish their results, they coordinate their results with each other. The UI then uses this set of results to rank the list of hospitals in order of suitability. In order to rank the hospitals the following are taken into consideration 1) Current resource availability at each hospital 2) Special medical facility offered by each hospital 3) Patient’s medical history with each hospital and 4) Current road status information.
By the time paramedics reach the scene of emergency their onboard terminal already reflects the list of nearby hospitals ranked form the most relevant to the current case, to the least relevant. This is information is also supplemented with the patient’s medical details and current road situation for each hospital. Once at the scene the medics stabilise the patient, administer medications based on the medical history (such as allergies) and load him in. It is important to note that although the application ranks the hospitals in their order of priority, the final decision with respect to selecting the most appropriate hospital still rests with the paramedics. In essence the application provides for a decision support tool that aids the paramedic by empowering him with real-time, mission critical information at the point-of-care. The paramedics review the ranked hospitals and the ranking details associated with each one and then make their final selection. On the way to the selected hospital, a message is sent to the associated hospital agent, which then updates the relevant hospital databases with the details of the patient ‘en route’ to the hospital. By the time the ambulance reaches the hospital this information has already enabled the emergency room staff to prepare for the arrival of the patient.
Tommi, you asked: "...Just curious, is your RWW reader base mostly US based, or is it global?"
Answer: over half our readers are from US, but we do have a good international audience too.
Thanks for pointing out Nokia s60.