Location-based service Loopt has been allowed its first patent, and it could be a big one.

The patent, as described, seems relevant to numerous existing products, including Google’s Latitude. In layman’s terms, it describes using your location to display relevant ads and offers on top of a map, as an interstitial, or as a text ad — another claim also discusses displaying where your friends are on the same map. The patent was first filed in 2007, with Loopt founder Sam Altman listed as the primary inventor (Loopt got its start long before the likes of Foursquare and Google Latitude).

The patent, which is listed as Application Number 11/931,113 by the US Patent and Trademark Office, still hasn’t technically been granted. But it has been “allowed,” which is a precursor to being granted. At this point, it could still be a few months before the patent is granted, assuming that Loopt pays all the proper fees and files the proper paperwork.

Here’s one relevant claim:

“17. A method comprising: providing, by a server, an advertising campaign including a plurality of advertising messages for transmitting to users of mobile devices at different times or locations; receiving, by the server, the geographic location of a mobile communication device operated by a user within an area; and transmitting to the mobile communication device for display, at least one of the plurality of advertising messages, wherein the advertising message includes content relevant to a characteristic of the user or activity performed by the user and is in the form of a text advertising message, coupon and/or graphic element that is superimposed over a map representation of the area around the mobile communication device displayed on a graphical user interface of the mobile communication device of the user, displayed in an interstitial display page of the graphic user interface, or displayed as a text-based message, and wherein the ad message is transmitted in response to the location of the user.”

It’s unclear what this means for Loopt (the company isn’t commenting). Loopt has sworn to the Patent Pledge, which states that they won’t offensively use their patents against any company with fewer than 25 people. Of course, most of the location-based companies you’ve heard of have more than that. Even if they never use it offensively (which would be nice), this may be a good defensive patent for Loopt going forward.

Part of me feels like the notion of putting a layer of ads on top of a map, alongside where your friends are, is an obvious use-case for smartphones. This was filed in 2007, so the assumption may be that it was less obvious back then.

Location-based service Loopt is getting some nice promotion for the next three months, courtesy of San Francisco’s International Airport and Virgin America. And it might make your trip to the airport a bit less expensive.

Beginning this week, travelers going through SFO’s new Terminal 2 will be able to check-in on Loopt to receive an offer from one of six businesses located within the terminal, including Kiehl’s and Natalie’s Candy Jar — as well as hefty discounts from Virgin America itself. The difference between this and most other check-in based offers is that the deal you receive is chosen randomly from one of these merchants (you just need to check-in at Terminal 2).

The promotion is being coordinated by Virgin America and Loopt, but travelers flying on American (which is also based in Terminal 2 at SFO) will be able to score the check-in deals as well. Each of the participating merchants is deciding what they want to give away, and while some merchants in the terminal aren’t participating, Loopt says that they may well jump on board in the coming weeks.

The catch? After installing and signing up for Loopt, you’ll need to watch a clip called ‘A Day in the Life of SFO’s T2′ before you can see which offer you’ve received. It runs nearly three minutes long (which seems pretty hefty) and you have to watch the whole thing. But the video itself is well done, so it’s not a painful experience… provided you aren’t late for a flight. If nothing else, it’s the first time I’ve ever watched a commercial for an airport terminal.

Loopt is going to be promoted to travelers through a variety of ways in the terminals: each of the businesses giving out deals will feature a sign, and the terminal itself will feature screens telling people to install the app and check-in.

It was almost exactly one year ago that Facebook launched Places, their location-based offering. Reading the press at the time, you would have thought it was going to be the Foursquare-killer, the Gowalla-strangler, the Loopt-beheader, etc. Nevermind that Facebook partnered with all of them for the launch — those guys were done.

Fast forward to today: Foursquare recently raised a large round of funding valuing them at $600 million. And Facebook is killing off Places.

To be clear, Facebook is not ducking out of the location game itself. In fact, you could say that they’re doubling-down on it. But they are moving away from the game that the “check-in” services have been playing. And a result of that is Places being killed off and being replaced by new “Nearby” area, as Jason outlined along with the bigger privacy changes today.

Reading over Facebook’s own post on the location changes, it wasn’t entirely clear what these changes meant for the concept of the check-in itself. But this page appears to make it a little more clear. As I read it, check-ins will remain as a part of the product, but they’ll no longer be emphasized. It seems that the hope is that people will move away from thinking of location in terms of “checking in” and instead think about it in terms of tagging your location to what ever it is you’re doing — sharing a thought, posting a picture, etc.

As the new location page makes clear, Facebook now views location usage in three main ways:

• Share where you’ve been
• Share where you are now
• Share where you’re going

Past. Present. Future.

This is smart, as it’s something none of the other location services have really nailed yet. And now that location is being emphasized on every Facebook action (though it can easily be turned off) — and not just on mobile — a lot of people are going to use it. Location as a layer of context is about to get a big upgrade.

All of this is also smart from a location-based advertising strategy. It’s more data and more strong signals. What I’m not yet clear on is what this means for Facebook’s location-based deals service. Launched alongside Places last year, it would seem that this never really took off. And Facebook doesn’t mention it today. I’ve reached out to them to clarify.

The video on the location info page details how location tagging will work. The default on facebook.com appears to be city-level, and there’s a secondary location button to add an actual venue (which is then inserted into your status message). You can also add location to photos you’ve already posted.

The video also points out that on mobile devices there will still be a check-in button, but the functionality will be different. It apparently will only exist as a part of a status update and there will be no more big blue “Check In” button that inserts your check-in into a stream of other check-ins (and again, no more Places area itself). Instead, once you select a place, it will simply be tacked on to the end of your status message.

Location sharing will also be tied to the more direct and simplified privacy changes Facebook outlined today.

Update: Here’s what Facebook has to say on the check-in deals:

Once someone tags where they are on Facebook, they will be directed to the News Feed. If the Place is offering a Check-in Deal, the title of the deal will appear below the News Feed story. You’ll then be able to click on the deal title and will then be taken to the claim flow.

Below, find the flow diagram of how it will now work.

Of course, as my colleague Erick Schonfeld pointed out, for this to work, Loopt needs to get enough deals requested and turned on for this to become a viable model for Loopt. Not to mention there’s some friction when considering that not many people have heard about Loopt, let alone think of it as a daily deals provider. And then there’s the issue of building a sizable salesforce.

There was some skepticism in the comment section at the end of Erick’s post over Loopt’s new direction, and some made the good point that user-generated deals have been tried before, without a lot of success — not to mention that it remains to be seen whether or not users will be willing to wait for deals to be approved. We do love our instant gratification. There’s certainly something to be said for the growing interest in the combination of location-based-services and daily deals, even if the LBS space is brimming.

Today, mere hours after announcing U-Deals, Loopt took the first step towards silencing its critics (though admittedly it still has a long way to go before that silence is permanent), as its first U-Deal sold out in under an hour. 48 minutes, to be precise. The first U-Deal, made in partnership with Virgin America, offered $35 for a Virgin America ticket voucher valued at $100. 500 deals were offered, and 500 deals sold in 48 minutes. Not too shabby.

Discounts on airfare are definitely in demand with the high price of tickets today, so this was no doubt a great place to start. Especially with Virgin America. But it will be interesting to see if U-Deals can sustain relevant deals of this kind when the names aren’t quite as big. If so, there could be great things ahead for Loopt’s new service. We’ll have to wait and see.

But for now, it’s probably fair for Loopt to say, “How do you like ‘dem apples?”

For now.

Mobile social network Loopt is turning on the revenue streams by going after the daily deal space. It already partnered with Groupon to show users nearby Groupon Now deals via notifications, but today it is launching its own twist on daily deals. Loopt is calling them U-Deals.

Instead of going out and getting a large inventory of deals at local merchants, U-Deals lets users request their own deals. And they try to rally their friends and other people to support the deal as well through Facebook, Twitter, email, and whatnot. Once a deal hits a tipping point, then Loopt will contact the business and request the deal. This will require a sales force, but not one as big as a traditional daily deal provider. “One of the things we like about this is that it’s neither self-serve nor a pure sales force model,” says Loopt CEO Sam Altman. “In our beta testings, businesses respond well to a phone call like ‘we have a check for $2000 and 100 new customers for you if you agree to this deal.’”

Loopt is working in partnership with ChompOn, a white-label daily deals platform that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt last year. A New York City-based startup called Ringleadr that is about to launch is also targeting the reverse-deals concept.

In order for this to work, Loopt needs to get enough deals requested and then turned on. “Liquidity is certainly the key issue,” admits Altman. Also, local commerce is a hard nut to crack. U-Deals has the advantage of being an easy sell, as Altman says. Loopt is basically coming these small businesses with pre-qualified sales. But many of them have probably never heard of Loopt. (“Is that like Groupon?”) My guess is he will need a larger salesforce than he expects, and that’s if he’s successful. Are people even looking for deals inside Loopt?

Here is the big issue with this model. The people who say they want a deal at a restaurant or store are probably already customers of that merchant. The appeal of daily deals for local merchants is to get new customers in the door. It’s customer acquisition. Where Loopt can make this work is if the people who initially request the deals can convince other people who aren’t already existing customers to buy in.

While the plan is to notify users of deals when the app isn’t even open, and the time sensitive Groupon Now! deals will also appear on place pages within Loopt, so users can see and share with friends their favorite relevant deals in the vicinity.

Loopt has basically beat Groupon to bringing this LBS/realtime technology to its own app, where you still have to type in your zip code to get more granular locational deal notifications. But Groupon recently acquired Pelago, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar functionality is on its way.

Currently the specific Loopt service is only available in Chicago, and users who are interested can go into their Loopt settings, turn Reward Alerts on and start receiving their once a day, location specific Groupon Now! deal well, now!.

As 14% of subscribers interact with daily deal push notifications, this is a mutually beneficial and strategic partnership between the two companies. But one can help but wonder when Groupon will apply this same technology to its own mobile app and what exactly that will mean for Loopt long term.

Loopt is planning on expanding the Groupon Now feature nationwide, and it should be available on both Android and iPhones in each market.

Today, the location-based service Loopt is launching a new feature which will definitely entice users to check out the app at SXSW: Push Deals.

Yes, the Loopt Android and iPhone apps will now be able to send you deals in realtime based on your location by way of push notifications. This means that if you’re walking by a restaurant and it’s a slow night, they can hit a button to send out a notification to give you a deal to come in. This works on a network like Loopt (as opposed to Foursquare) because the app uses background location to keep track of you.

Obviously, all of these push settings can be controlled by the user in the app, so you’re not getting spammed by deals as you walk around a city. You’ll be able to see the deals that you want, founder Sam Altman says.

And the first test of the system will be at SXSW with some pretty killer deals — Loopt will be giving away over $50,000 worth of merchandise to those using the app in Austin. What kinds of stuff? This kind:

• TiVo is giving away TiVo premiere packages
• Microsoft is giving away Kinects
• Jawbone is doing Jamboxes
• Southwest is giving away free roundtrip tickets
• Altec Lansing is giving away Mix Boomboxes
• Yurbuds is doing Ironman Yurbuds
• Tony Hsieh and Guy Kawasaki are giving away signed books
• And a lot more from people like Fox, Gilt City, OkCupid, and more

“These will all be ‘flash deals’–users get a message with the location at the same time if they’re near the rewards wagon, and there are limited supplies,” Altman says. He also notes that there’s no limit on how often you can win — you just have to be first to get to the wagon mentioned in the message.

Once SXSW is over, Loopt will begin rolling these Push Deals out to select cities.

It was almost exactly two years ago that Google launched Latitude, their location-based service. Two years may not seem like a long time, but it’s “the equivalent of a decade in location services,” Latitude PM Ken Norton jokes. Most importantly, it was just before Foursquare launched to the world at SXSW in 2009. That changed the entire game, literally, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt likes to say. You see, it brought the idea of the “check-in” into play. And that ended up being the idea that launched a thousand location-based services. Today, finally, Google is getting on board with that idea.

Yes, the check-in is coming to Latitude — finally.

Latitude at its core has always been about sharing your best available location with people on a continuous basis. In other words, it was a service that relied on location updates running constantly in the background. “It has been good for seeing where you are, but not seeing where you ARE,” is now Norton puts it. In other words, you could see that a friend was at a place on a map, but not that they were at a Starbucks. To find that out for sure, you’d still have to send them a text.

But now Latitude will have a check-in feature that will use Google Places’ place database. “Users have been asking for this for a while, but we realized we could do this differently. Check-ins are great, but let’s combine them with continuous location,” Norton says.

And so there will be three key features of the new product. First, there will be check-in notifications. These will pop up on your phone when you go somewhere and forget to check-in (if you turn them on, of course). Because your location is still being constantly updated in the background, when you stop at a certain location for long enough, Google can tell that you’re at a particular place and can alert you to check-in there. “This is a little more convenient than pulling out the app to hunt and search for your location each time,” Norton says.

Second, Latitude is doing automatic check-ins. Again, if you opt-in to this, Latitude will be able to register the places you go to often and will know to automatically tell your friends you’re there without you having to do anything. Norton notes that this is useful for work, which perhaps is the place you’re at most often, but get sick of manually checking-in at all the time.

Third, Latitude will have a check-out feature as well. While subtle, this is very useful. Again, thanks to the background location element, Google can tell if you’ve left a place that you’ve checked-in and will effectively “check you out” of that location so friends don’t show up looking for you after you’ve left.

The downside, sadly, is that this check-in feature will be available only on Android devices at first. While Norton says they’re working as quickly as they can to bring it to their iPhone app, since that app is so new, they’re still not as quick when it comes to updates yet. So instead, this will be a part of Google Maps 5.1 for Android starting today.

Norton notes that Latitude has 10 million active users now — making it one of the largest (if not the largest) location-based service out there. He’s quick to note that they measure this by monthly active users, not overall registration. That number will surprise a lot of people as Latitude doesn’t get anywhere near the hype that Foursquare, Gowalla, and others get. Clearly, Google hopes that will change with the check-in feature. It certainly will bring more utility to the app for many of those users.

Of course, the location game is also much different than it was two years ago. Not only has Foursquare caught on with a lot of mainstream media, but Facebook is now in the space with Places.

In terms of competing places databases, Norton jokes that “we help by not creating yet another one.” Again, Latitude will use Google Places to populate the venues that users can check-in to. He also notes that they have a Places API and that others are welcome to use elements of it for their own location services. And he says that going forward, the Latitude team is open to exploring any features users want, such as the ability to update the place database manually.

In terms of the all-important deals, Norton says that they have nothing to announce at this time. Deals have proven to be a key part of Foursquare and will be a key part of Facebook Places. They’re also a part of Google Places, so you have to imagine that eventually, Latitude will get these too.

Now the most important question: what about the mayor? Norton says that there are “loyalty levels” built in. The three he mentions are “Regular”, “Guru”, and “VIP”. Of those, Guru is the big one, then VIP, then regular. But how you obtain each title will vary from place to place — since people visit coffee shops more than the dentist, for example. And there can be multiple recipients of each distinction at each location, he says.

Right now, Latitude will allow you to share your check-ins in two ways: to your friends within Latitude, and with the ability to post to your public Google Profile. That’s right, you can’t send your location to Twitter or Facebook — at least not yet. Norton says they’re considering other services to send your location information to. But it’s a bit trick since Latitude has a history of being a more contained network with tighter social controls.

He does think the check-in may completely change the way people use Latitude, as they could be more open to accepting more friends now, but only sharing their city-level location with them and/or their explicit check-ins. They could then allow true friends to see their constantly updating location, he says.

It will be interesting to see how this changes Latitude. The continuous location plus check-ins is a smart play (albeit one Loopt has been doing for some time), but it brings up both potentially privacy and battery life issues. In terms of the latter, Norton says his team has spent a lot of time worry about battery issues over the past two years. And they’ve gotten so good, he says, that the battery hit for background location is now “negligible”. That’s good news.

Now bring the check-in to the iPhone, please.

The first thing you’ll notice about Loopt 4.0 is that it has been entirely redesigned. More importantly, the app has been significantly simplified, to clean up the user experience. On the main screen you can now quickly jump to five areas: Me, Settings, Places, Friends, and Map. The last three are the most important because that’s where you will check-in and see where your friends are.

Below the core buttons is an area to be able to quickly toggle auto location sharing on and off. This is a core feature that is unique to Loopt among the big location players (besides Latitude, which only has this feature). Here, you can easily turn background location updates on or off. And you can determine which of your friends you want to allow to see these updates. Essentially, this allows you to let others track you in realtime — no check-in needed.

Loopt also has the nice feature of being able to automatically update when you a friend is nearby.

If the design of the new Loopt looks familiar to you, it’s probably because you frequently use the Facebook iPhone app. Like version 3.0, Loopt 4.0 borrows some elements from that, including the new Notifications bottom bar.

Speaking of Facebook, much more important is the way in which Loopt integrates with Facebook Connect. When you link your account, you’ll see all of your Facebook friends who are currently using Places. Their check-ins there will integrate seamlessly into your Loopt stream, and sit alongside your Loopt friends. And when you check-in on Loopt, it can easily be passed back to Places (as well as Twitter).

You’ll recall that the latest version of Gowalla, also has this tight Facebook Places integration. They also have Foursquare integration, but Loopt hasn’t enabled that. Instead, they’re betting heavily that Facebook will be the location platform of the future, it seems.

One other really interesting feature of the new Loopt is the new Ping/Pong feature. Previously, you could Ping a friend to ask them to update their location. But now you can send a message alongside that ping. When they see that message, they can Pong you back with their location. Essentially, this is a location-based simple texting system.

Loopt 4.0 also makes it easier to see what the hot places are around you and to see what deals are close by to your current location.

So is all of this enough to keep Loopt in the equation? The bet on Facebook is a pretty big one here, but it’s not a bad one. And with features like background location and the location-based texting, they’re certainly adding something on top of the layer.

But Loopt, like the other players, may find it hard to compete with Facebook in the deals space as Facebook ramps that up in the coming months. Can all of them keep their sales teams around when competitors start using Facebook deals through an inevitable API?

That’s a question for Loopt 5.0, perhaps.

You can find Loopt in the App Store here. (It should be live now, even if it says it’s the old version.) Find out more in the video below.

Location-based service Loopt has hired Aditya Palande to be their new Vice President of Engineering. He’s leaving Google after just about three and a half years there. Most recently, he was in charge of the entire portfolio of applications in the CRM space for the search giant. In total, he has about 20 years of engineering experience at various companies.

Loopt was one of the pioneers in the location space, but has since been overshadowed by rivals like Foursquare. But the company has recently taken the approach of aligning itself more closely with Facebook, as the social network makes a heavy push into the location space with Places.

They’re now charged with providing additional utility on top of Facebook’s location graph. And Palande will be in charge of the technical details behind that. He notes that the space is still in its nascent stages.

With a lot of these location startups, you check-in and you can push that check-in to Facebook. This technically checks you in to Facebook Places as well, but what it really does is create a new object for the place you’re at on the other service within Facebook’s graph. With Loopt’s new integration, you’ll check-in to a place and it will find that place on Facebook Places, and check you in there.

“As far as I can tell, this will be the deepest integration yet,” founder Sam Altman tells us. “I think this is key to a unified data set and all the good things that come with that,” he continues.

I agree with that. Right now, while it’s nice to see a lot of companies working with Facebook’s data to unify things a bit, it’s not true unification since all these random place objects are being created. Foursquare and Gowalla are two example of location startups doing this. On one hand, you can certainly see why — they want to keep their location graphs, which they’ve worked hard to build, intact. But on the other hand, the data is a lot less useful.

This new Facebook Places integration is a part of the latest iPhone update for Loopt. In it, you’ll also be able to see all of your Facebook and Loopt friends on a map at the same time. And you’ll be able to see past check-ins to Facebook Places from within Loopt — including Facebook comments on those check-ins.

All of this should be coming to the Android version short as well, Altman says.

So how did it go? Loopt says 1,300 people checked in to a single taco truck in San Francisco, and 80% of those people have already bought tickets on Virgin America for flights. It was Virgin’s fifth highest revenue day ever, says Loopt (we’re confirming with Virgin).

Added Loopt CEO Sam Altman by email: “You should also mention that we are on fire.” And indeed they are. Loopt has more than four million users, despite the fact that they are covered far less often than the smaller Foursquare. Loopt is quietly becoming a very large presence in the mobile, um, presence war.

Also, Virgin America doesn’t suck.

Update: Virgin says, “The Loopt reward activation, as part of Virgin America’s nationwide Mexico launch system wide fare sale that day and the significant online buzz circulating about the promotion, helped make it the fifth highest sales day in VX history.”

Heavy Foursquare users, you have a new app to get immediately. Future Checkin is an app that allows you to check-in to your favorite Foursquare venues automatically when you’re near them. You don’t have to do a thing besides simply have your phone on you and this app will check you in while running in the background with iOS 4.

Developer Tim Sears says he was actually inspired to make this app by our posts about iOS 4 background location and check-in fatigue. Check-in fatigue in particular is a growing problem. A number of heavy users of Foursquare that I know (myself included) have been complaining in recent months that it’s getting a bit tedious to have to pull out your phone each time to check-in to a venue. Particularly venues that you frequent. Future Checkin absolutely solves that.

Here’s how it works: you sign in to the app with your Foursquare account, and it shows you a list of Foursquare venues nearby. Or you can search for your favorite venues. From this list, you choose the ones to mark as “Favorites.” You can also scan your recent check-in history and select venues from here to add to your Favorites. This Favorites list is key — these are the venues you will be automatically checked-in to when you get close enough to them (within 300 meters).

There is also an option to automatically check-in to venues you’ve been to recently (ones not explicitly marked as Favorites). In the “More” area of the app you can toggle this on and off. From here, you can also turn auto Favorites check-ins on and off. You can also turn off notifications (that send you a Push Notification when you’re automatically checked-in to a venue), and toggle the “Kill Switch” which basically turns off background location.

All of this works thanks to the new ability for third-party apps to run in the background with iOS 4. Location is one of the features that can remain on when you leave an app (a slider in the settings allows you to determine if you’d like the GPS updates to be more frequent or save some battery life by making them less frequent).

“This app is really designed for people who are getting check-in fatigue, who often forget to check-in to places, or who don’t want to be rude by pulling out their phone in social settings. Who it is not designed for is people trying to cheat Foursquare, so Future Checkin will only check you in to a place once every four hours, and never the same place twice in a row,” Sears says.

As for the future of Future Checkin, Sears says that he plans to implement Gowalla integration too, as soon as their write API is ready to roll (hopefully this week). That could help solve the larger issue of check-in fatigue — checking-in across all these apps at various venues. Future Checkin’s solution would basically be check.in that runs in the background. Awesome.

With the launch of iOS 4, Loopt was the first app with the ability to run location in the background. But that doesn’t auto check you in to venues, instead it just continually shows where you are to your friends on a map. In that regard, it’s more like Google Latitude. That may actually be a better solution for many users now, as it’s not yet clear if the world is ready for these auto check-ins. But power users of Foursquare certainly are. And this app speaks to how this stuff might work in the future.

The only question may be: will Foursquare itself implement such an option soon?

Future Checkin is $0.99 — a special 50% off price for launch week. Find it in the App Store here.

Related:

• Why Checking Into Foursquare With Your Phone in Your Pocket Won’t Always Work
• Shopkick Teams With Best Buy To End Fake Retail Check-Ins
• Did Shopkick Just Change The Check-In Game? You Be The Judge [Video]

At Google I/O in May, the search giant indicated that they were about to take their commitment to location to the next level. Sure, Latitude had been around for a while, but everyone knew that Google could do more in the space. The announcement of some new location APIs seemed to a big part of the solution. And now comes the fun part.

Today on their Geo blog, Google is announcing that they’re beginning to open the Places API for business. The first developers getting access? Those working on check-in services.

Here’s what Google has to say:

We are going to focus initially on check-in applications. These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience.

So does this mean the end of Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and all the rest? Well, no. All this means is that it should be a lot easier for startups to build the next versions of those types of services. Of course, if you listen to Foursquare talk about it, they’ll say they’re already moving on to bigger and better things beyond simply the check-in.

Google is pointing those who wish to get access to this API to fill out this application form found here. Again, the focus at first will be on check-in apps, but they promise to expand the API to other uses once they feel it is up to speed.

They are also accepting check-in apps for this API built in conjunction with the Buzz API as well.

Just prior to I/O, Latitude manager Steve Lee hinted that some sort of check-in functionality was likely in the future for the service. At I/O, the Latitude API made it possible for others to build such functionality. But this new Places API will allow for location services built on top of Google’s data but independent of Latitude.

“Location Check in is so 2010,” Mark Cuban writes today on his blog. His thought is that facial recognition hardware/software installed in public venues is going to replace the need for users to actually check-in to a place.

I absolutely agree. But I think we’re ten years away from that happening. And maybe more.

If you’ve seen the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report, it has a similar technology to what Cuban envisions. At a few points, main character John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is walking through a public place and a retina scanner picks up his unique eye signature and offers up customized advertisements and specials for him. “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right about now!” American Express recognizes that Anderton has been a card member since 2037.

Even more in line with Cuban’s vision is when Anderton (now with another person’s set of eyes — long story) walks into the Gap and the eye scan allows the virtual greeter to ask how the last purchase he made has been treating him. To most people, this will sound extremely creepy and invasive. To me (and I suspect Cuban), this sounds fantastic. It sounds like the future we’re inevitably headed toward.

But it is still the future. Minority Report takes place in 2054. Sure, that’s just a random date picked out by the filmmakers, but Spielberg actually hired a team of consultants — so-called futurists — to come up with technology that is likely to be in place all those years from now. They’re trying to be as realistic as possible.

Yes, the retina scanning in the movie is more advanced than the facial recognition stuff Cuban is talking about. But I’d argue that it’s not really a matter of technology advancement that will hinder such things. Instead, it’s society being ready for these new forms of technology.

Think about the location space right now. Foursquare, the current company getting most of the buzz, is hardly the first player in the space. Not even close. But they came along at the right time with the right method. When Foursquare launched in 2009, it was actually co-founder Dennis Crowley’s second location-based service. The first was the similar Dodgeball, which was purchased by Google in 2005, but never really took off. Part of the reason is that application development on smartphones was basically non-existent before 2008 when Apple’s App Store came along. So Dodgeball was done through SMS. It was clunky. Mainstream adoption would have been very difficult to achieve.

The new wave of smartphones brought with them GPS and Wi-Fi triangulation. Location was now easily accessible — it no longer had to be manually input. And this is part of what Cuban is talking about when he takes the idea a step further by saying his facial recognition tech will replace the check-in because it will make it so “Individuals never do any of the work.”

I agree that next step is coming. But before we get to facial recognition, things such as background location with geofencing will come into play first. And those are still a little bit away from happening. The fact of the matter is that one of the key reasons Foursquare took off and quickly stole the buzz from services that were earlier in the space like Loopt and Whrrl is because of the check-in. It helped ease users into location because they were in control of it (and the game elements certainly helped as well).

Next, users will need an app to ease them into using background location and geofencing (which allows you to be checked-in to places automatically). It could be one of the current players, or it could be someone new. But that concept, which will have to be opt-in by virtue of installing an application, will be needed to pave the way for what Cuban is taking about farther down the line.

Cuban sees the future where this facial recognition accesses Facebook’s name/profile picture database to pull information. If you thought Facebook’s current privacy issues are a nightmare, this would be Armageddon. But again, that’s just looking at it right now. Down the line, people will grow more and more accustomed to this type of stuff. And perhaps the scenario Cuban lays out will be the norm.

But to say that the check-in is 2010 implies that 2011 is going to be the year this stuff starts coming into play. I say no way. We’ll be lucky if we see that kind of stuff in play in 2020. Not because the technology isn’t there — it definitely will be, and probably already is — it’s because we’re just not there yet as a society.

But hopefully posts like Cuban’s which bring up the topic and dream of the future will help get us there quicker.

Loopt was one of the first location-based services to get a lot of hype — even getting on stage at the Apple event first talking about the App Store way back when. But as we’ve noted numerous times, they started out at a disadvantage because the iPhone didn’t allow third-party apps to run in the background. And that was Loopt’s model, continuous location updates. But with iOS 4, the iPhone does finally allow for that functionality — and specially for background location. And Loopt is benefiting from it.

Daily sessions are up 60% from just prior to iOS 4 being release, founder Sam Altman tells us. Both background location and the proximity alerts are pushing this growth — as well as the latest version of the app, 3.0, in general. Altman says that daily active users is in the hundreds of thousands.

Altman also credits Loopt’s usage surge to being featured in markets where Android phones are quickly gaining popularity. And the biggest surge is thanks to the fact that Loopt is now preloaded on almost all MetroPCS phones. “We’re finally seeing real Android growth,” Altman says.

Loopt pivoted last year to allow for check-ins when it was clear that the model was taking off. But the latest version marries the two ideas. The latest iPhone version allows you to check-in at a venue and keep your live location active for up to 24 hours so that friends can see as you move on the Loopt map. For some people that’s extremely creepy. For others, it’s the future of location.

You can find Loopt 3.0 in the App Store here as a free download. You can also search the Android Market for it.

Version 2.2 of Gowalla, which just went live in the App Store, is the first version of the app that is iOS 4 and iPhone 4-compatible. In the update notes, Gowalla, which has always been more design-oriented compared to its competitors, remarks on their excitement for the new Retina display:

The beautiful Gowalla experience you’ve come to love has been pixel-polished for the iPhone 4′s new (unbelievable) Retina Display. This is just the first step, though. We’ll be updating Stamps, Pins, and items regularly behind-the-scenes until every bit of Gowalla truly shines. If you’re using the iPhone 4, we think you’ll be amazed. If you are using a previous iPhone or iPod Touch, though, you’ll still see the same lovely Gowalla you expect.

There is no question that Gowalla’s iPhone app continues to look much nicer than the one made by main rival Foursquare. With the Retina display, Gowalla is clearly going to try to widen that gap, hoping it will help differentiate their app. But so far, the beauty advantage hasn’t helped much. After their showdown at SXSW in March (which was a pretty even fight), Foursquare appears to be growing more quickly (they did a million check-ins on July 3) and now has more funding ($21 million versus just over $10 million for Gowalla).

Something else interesting in the notes of the new Gowalla app is that they say they’ve “made improvements to how Gowalla handles location.” This doesn’t appear to have anything to do with background location (at least not in the same way that Loopt is currently using it), but we’ve reached out to Gowalla to try to clarify that.

One thing definitely fixed is the location issues Gowalla was having with users who updated to iOS 4. Gowalla apologized for those issues, which, in some cases, forced users to open the Maps app before Gowalla to make sure location was working).

This latest version also makes it easier for new users to sign up for Gowalla right from the app. Notably, you can now pre-populate much of the data to need to fill out by selecting your entry card in your iPhone address book — it’s a nice, simple touch.

You can find version 2.2 of Gowalla here. It’s a free download.

As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now, iOS 4 is out and spreading across iPhones like wildfire. With it, comes the ability for third-party apps to run certain tasks in the background. One of those tasks is background location — an awesome feature which we previewed in our review of Loopt 3.0 earlier today. But Loopt has been in the location game for a long time — what about startups that want to get into location right now and support the newest functionality? SimpleGeo has you covered.

The location infrastructure startup is today adding to its array of options, iOS 4 location support. With it, companies will be able to implement background location services for iOS 4 with a few simple code tweaks. How easy is it to implement with SimpleGeo? Geofencing, the ability to track when a user crosses a certain location-based plane, will take about six lines of code, co-founder Joe Stump tells us. Background Tracking will take about 30 lines of code. From what I hear, this is much, much simpler than trying to write this stuff yourself. And this is all done in SimpleGeo’s cloud.

As an example, Stump tells us, “So you basically just say, ‘Track parislemon’ and we handle that in our API along with record history.’” “I can then come back and say, ‘Show me the last 10 places parislemon was‘,” Stump continues. Creepy? Sort of. Powerful and easy? Yes.

Another example is that when you switch neighborhoods with a location service, it could alert you that someone you know is around you (similar to something Loopt 3.0 offers). Or SimpleGeo’s data could offer you the ability to do something as easy as automatically know when you enter a new state and give you a message like: “Welcome to the Sunshine State.“

SimpleGeo hasn’t yet determined full pricing for this option, but Stump notes that the first million calls will be free. He gives a full technical overview of how exactly this all works in his post on the matter.

When Loopt first launched on the iPhone alongside the App Store in 2008, it looked to be an awesome new location-based service. Apple clearly agreed, as they gave the app plenty of face time: demo slots on stage at major events, appearances in commercials, promotion in the App Store, etc. But the early version of Loopt had a fatal flaw: to work properly, the app had to be running all the time. Now, this wasn’t really Loopt’s flaw, since the iPhone did not allow third-party applications to run in the background — but it was still a flaw. Today, that flaw gets corrected — sort of.

The new version of Loopt, 3.0, which is set to appear in the App Store at some point today, is built to use Apple’s new iOS 4 software (formerly known as iPhone OS 4). The biggest new addition to the software is the ability for third-party apps to run processes in the background. Yes, this is somewhat limited, but included in what you can do is location-updating in the background. And Loopt 3.0 takes full advantage of that. But at the same time, it also still offers the functionality that proved to be more popular on the iPhone: check-ins.

While continually updating location apps like Loopt failed to catch on in a major way due to the earlier iPhone limitations, check-in based apps like Foursquare and Gowalla have gotten traction recently by getting around this limitation because they explicitly make a user check-in at a venue. The idea became so popular that in November of last year that Loopt pivoted away from implicit location, to this check-in model with version 2.0 of its app. Version 3.0 shift back a bit towards the implicit background location, but marries it with the check-in.

So how does background location work with Loopt 3.0? Well, when you check-in to a venue, there is a new “Live Location” area at the bottom of the check-in screen. This is a slider which allows you to set how long you’d like Loopt to update your location in the background without you having to do anything. This slider can be set from anywhere to a few minutes up to 8 hours. When it’s set, if the iPhone notices you’ve left an area (which it can tell by your phone switching cell towers), it will update your location on the Loopt map that is built in to the software.

Now, it’s important to note that Loopt is thinking about the privacy ramifications of this. They have a setting to make it so that background location updates can only been seen by a small subset of your social graph. This way, you can make it so only a group like your family can see where you are in real-time. And again, to see this, they’ll have to load up the map on Loopt since this background location feature won’t explicitly check you in at a venue — it just shows where you are on this map.

If you do allow your larger social graph to see this background location information, you can imagine that it may lead to even more serendipitous encounters than the current batch of check-in apps do. As I’ve noted recently, one big downside of check-in apps is that there’s no real way to “check-out” — that is, let your friends know you’ve left a venue. The only way to do this is to check-in someplace else. With background location enabled, your friends could see that while you may have checked-in to the pizza joint an hour ago, you’ve since left and are a mile away from there.

This background location features offers something else cool: if Loopt sees that a friend of yours (using background location) is nearby, it can send you a Push Notification to alert you of that.

It’s worth noting that the iPhone limitation wasn’t the only thing keeping background location from taking off. After all, phones such as those running Android and some BlackBerry phones have had the ability to update location in the background for some time. And while apps like Google Latitude say this model is working on Android, the public largely doesn’t see it that way — at least not yet. The underlying issue here seems to be that by having explicit check-ins, it’s a natural security barrier. People can only know where you are when you explicitly say where you are. With background location, you have to remember that you may be telling people where you are implicitly.

Latitude does things like ping you every so often to remind you that you’re sharing this data, but it’s still kind of a clunky user experience. As I mentioned, Loopt’s method is to set the slider for how long you’d like to update you location in the background — and no matter what, it times out after 8 hours unless you explicitly turn it on again. This seems like a pretty good idea.

On top of the new background location feature, Loopt 3.0 brings an overhauled UI. The new main screen is a big improvement (think: main iPhone screen or Facebook main screen).

Judging from Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley’s comments to us last week, Loopt should have a healthy head start with this background location functionality. But if it proves to be successful, you can bet the rivals will hop on board quickly. Latitude, meanwhile, it evaluating trying to bring a native app to the iPhone for use with iOS 4 — you may recall Apple wouldn’t let them in the store the last time around, so they built a web app.

When it’s available, you can find Loopt 3.0 here in the App Store. It’s a free download.

Yesterday, Robert Scoble wrote a post about “Foursquare’s Yelp problem.” It’s an interesting read, with some good thoughts about how Foursquare can withstand feature-copying from a much larger rival. He asked for my thoughts, so I figured I’d jot some down here. Most importantly, his post got me thinking about the next phase of location, which I think we’re just about to enter.

First, Scoble’s thought that Foursquare might be in trouble because Yelp copied its check-in badge idea seems a bit premature to me. It was a much bigger deal when they added the whole check-in concept back in January, but the fact that Foursquare has started growing faster than ever since that point shows they have an advantage over Yelp in the realm. That advantage is that they have a social graph built for location, Yelp does not (yet).

As we all know, Yelp was built as a rating and review system for local restaurants. It has a social graph, but most people on it are connected to other people because they’re interested in their food/restaurant reviews. It has nothing to do with wanting to see which of their real friends are nearby (which is what Foursquare is all about). That’s why I think it would have been smarter for Yelp to partner with Foursquare (or Gowalla, or Loopt, etc) in the same way a service like Hot Potato has (using APIs). Yelp + Foursquare would have been a formidable power play in the location space. Instead, Yelp’s check-in offering is still pretty weak, while Foursquare’s is still pretty small.

Scoble also mentions that it might be wise for Foursquare to buy another service to bolster its offering. That’s not a bad idea, especially when they close that round of funding they’re working on. Scoble specifically menions Foodspotting — a service I like a lot — and that makes a lot of sense. But it may be wiser to think beyond that (or buy Foodspotting and extend their services). Foursquare needs a way to upload pictures and make comments on check-ins (and pictures). Basically, they need to copy the functionality Gowalla has right now. There’s always a fine line between keeping a service simple and cluttering it up with feature creep, but Gowalla’s mixture of check-ins, comments, and pictures is pretty damn perfect in my view right now.

Another idea Scoble brings up is a “check-out.” I love this. He talks about it from customer loyalty perspective, which is a good point, but I think it goes beyond that. One problem I have with Foursquare is that it’s too often populated with inaccurate (old) information. That is, I may go somewhere check-in when I get there, but 30 minutes later I’m gone. Someone who shows up 15 minutes after that (after seeing my check-in on Foursquare) will have missed me. This happens quite a bit. Sadly, the only way to “check-out” of a venue is to check-in to another one. That’s no good.

The problem with a check-out is that it’s total feature-creep. And I would bet that only a small percentage of those that check-in would ever explicitly check-out too — it’s simply asking users to do too much. That leads me to my main point. I think we’re on the verge of location services getting even more interesting thanks largely to one thing: iOS 4.

Apple’s new mobile operating system (formerly known as iPhone OS 4), which is launching in about a week, brings with it the ability for third-party applications to run in the background for the first time. One of the allowed functions is background location. Here’s how I see this working with Foursquare: you go to a venue, you load up Foursquare and check-in. The app then stays open in the background for a set period of time, notes when your location changes, and checks you out of the venue when you move far enough away.

Obviously, this would auto check-out would need to be opt-in, but it seems like the perfect initial use of the new iOS with background location. The next step is the auto check-in — but that’s a bit more complicated, and I think users may not be ready for it yet. Still, it would be a cool option to have. The app could track you location in the background and if you stop at some place for long enough, it could ask you if you’d like to check-in there.

By now, you Android fanboys have probably already left several comments along the lines of ”but Android has been able to run location in the background for 2 years.” That’s true, but let’s be honest: it’s the iPhone that’s going to help this type of activity take off (just as it was the iPhone that helped background location take off in the first place). Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, etc still see the vast majority of their activity on the iPhone. Android may be able to extend upon these new location ideas, but it will be the iPhone that puts them in the mind of most consumers.

And this is just the most basic functionality made possible by the new iOS. I bet we see a new range of location service pop-up this year thanks to the background location-functionality. And I still bet that a lot of those companies get snatched up by the bigger players looking to compete. And the location turf wars will heat up even more.