With SXSW starting Friday in Austin, Texas, every location-based service out there is right now finalizing updates that they hope will be the one that gets them used more than all the others. Loopt, is betting on events integration.
The latest version of the app, due to hit the App Store tomorrow will feature a new Pulse tab. Here you’ll find events populated from a ton of sources including the… → Read More
Tomorrow it will be exactly one month since the launch of Google Buzz. The song remains the same: it’s a mess. Normally, that wouldn’t bother me so much — after all, a lot of services are a mess — but Buzz has a lot of potential. But again, it’s been a month. I’m starting to wonder if it will ever reach that potential. I’m also starting to wonder if it shouldn’t have been introduced as… → Read More
Facebook has been doing background checks, known as due diligence, on the location-based social network Loopt, a source with knowledge of the talks tells us. Generally speaking, due diligence of this kind is only performed when a company is in acquisition or fundraising talks.
Loopt won’t comment on this story, and a Facebook spokesperson says “As a practical matter, we don’t comment on rumor and… → Read More
The rapid evolution of mobile phones, both on a hardware and a software level, combined with a surge in application storefront releases, deployments of higher-capacity network infrastructure and recent developments in positioning technologies could drive revenues from mobile location-based services to more than $12.7 billion by 2014, according to a new report published by Juniper Research.
The… → Read More
As Foursquare makes deals with major media companies, competitor Loopt is continuing to partner with with content companies to offer fresh news and reviews of restaurants, bars, businesses and events. Loopt’s mobile apps incorporates local content, deals and reviews about restaurants, bars and events from Zagat, Citysearch, Bing, and most recently Mobile Spinach. Today, Loopt is announcing a… → Read More
Loopt continues to ramp up its focus on location-based deals. The pioneer of the mobile social network is launching a new app called LooptCard, which lets mobile consumers tap into offers, coupons and discounts by checking-in to spots. Today, Loopt is partnering with deals site Mobile Spinach to offer users deals and coupons for local merchants via the Loopt App.
The deals are part advertising… → Read More
Earlier today, we noted that Loopt has launched a check-in for charity campaign to raise money for Haiti. Rival Gowalla is doing something similar as well.
Called “Hearts for Haiti,” Gowalla’s campaign will take place on Monday, February 8 in the San Francisco Bay Area. When someone uses the service to check-in at one of three selected locations during a specific time, Gowalla will donate $50 in… → Read More
We recently wrote about location-based mobile social network Loopt’s push to launch deals for check-ins, and today, the startup is putting use check-ins to philanthropic use. For every check-in at Chipotle, Panera Bread, or Whole Foods around the country, Loopt will donate $1 towards the Haiti earthquake relief. Half of the proceeds from the check-ins will be given to the American Red Cross and… → Read More
When Loopt released its iPhone app alongside the App Store launch in 2008, it seemed to have everything going for it. Founder Sam Altman was given time on stage at WWDC to show off the app. It was featured prominently in the App Store for a while. And it was really one of the first hot location-based services. But then it cooled off, partially because the app needed to be open to update your… → Read More
When you think of the idea of “checking-in” at a venue in a mobile app, you likely think of Foursquare or Gowalla right now. The two gained significant momentum, funding, and users in the location space in 2009. But even with the growth, both services are still relatively small, neither much bigger than 200,000 users. That’s why much larger social networks like Facebook are perceived to be a … → Read More
Much of the web is based around clickstreams. The latest version of Whrrl, a location-based application by Pelago, wants to take that concept into the real world, with “footstreams.”
Up until this point, since the launch of version 2 of its iPhone app earlier this year, Whrrl’s focus has been on storytelling. That is, allowing users to tag places they’re at with stories and pictures. But the… → Read More
Before there was Gowalla or Foursquare, there was location-based social network Loopt. Launched in 2006, Loopt was one of the pioneers of the location-based mobile social network. And Loopt has gained a huge number of users of its mobile apps; the social network currently has 3 million mobile users, 1 million of which are on the iPhone. Compared to Foursquare and Gowalla, which have 150,000 and… → Read More
A couple weeks ago, Google sent out 190,000 2D barcode stickers to the most popular local businesses around the country who had set up a Place Page on Google Maps. When people who are walking by a store or restaurant see one of these stickers they can pull out any phone with a special barcode reader and open up that store’s mobile Place Page, which is Google’s local directory. Local businesses… → Read More
As Foursquare has shown so far, gaming elements are an intriguing part of location-based services. And more recently, Gowalla has started moving more towards that space as well. And just in time for the holidays, they have a new game that can earn users presents.
During what is calls “The 10 And A Half Days of Christmas (Because 12 Days Were Too Predictable),” Gowalla is giving away gifts to… → Read More
There’s an absolute eruption of activity around location-based services right now. Companies are getting funded left and right, new ones are popping up daily, and certain ones are seemingly starting to take off. But for a number of them, there’s a very big wall looming. And the more popular they get, the quicker they’ll reach it.
A few weeks ago, our own Jason Kincaid wrote a post about how … → Read More
A lot has been made recently about the gaming elements of location-based social networks. Services like Foursquare and Gowalla allow users to compete for things like mayorships, badges, and virtual goods. Now Loopt is getting in on the fun, and taking it more literally into the real world.
The Loopt Holiday Scavenger Crawl is exactly what it sounds like: It’s a scavenger hunt during the holidays. → Read More
If you’re going to leave your job at TechCrunch, you better have a good reason. I think Mark Hendrickson actually may have had one.
Hendrickson left TechCrunch in March. After about two years of writing and doing development for TC, he got the startup itch. He formed a company, Worldly Developments, and along with co-founder Jay Marcyes is now ready to unveil their project: Plancast.
As you can… → Read More
Imagine a world where you sit at your computer and you never go outside. Where you never see another human being. This is the world that sites like Google and Facebook want you to live in.
Though they’d never admit to such a thing, the reasoning should be obvious: The longer you’re at your computer, the more time you’re spending on their sites. The more time your spending on their sites, the more… → Read More
As a blackberry user, I generally feel a little left out of of the location-based apps world. FourSquare only provides a mobile site for BlackBerry users (but has an Android app). BrightKite has an innovative BlackBerry app, but it’s not nearly as feature-rich as its sister iPhone app. Today, location-based social network Loopt is making a major upgrade to its BlackBerry app.
The new version of… → Read More
In the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report (yes, I make some reference to it about once a week), there’s a scene in which John Anderton (Tom Cruise’s character) is walking through an urban retail center and his eyes are getting scanned as he moves, which is serving up custom greetings and deals from retailers. It’s both creepy and cool. But that movie is set in 2054, we’re not there yet. But… → Read More
When Loopt launched in 2006 it was ahead of a curve that is just starting to be recognized: Location. Now, with services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and even Twitter fueling the location-based services frenzy, Loopt realized that it needed to shift its strategy a bit. Enter Pulse, a new feature launching today.
Previously, Loopt was more of a passive service — you started it up on… → Read More
Foursquare and Loopt have put location-based social networks on the map, and have potentially created a viable business model as well. Now there’s a new kid on the block, called Stalqer, which best described as a Foursquare on steroids. The iPhone app, which will be free, should hit the app store in the next few hours.
In theory, Stalqer is very similar to Foursquare in that it tracks your and… → Read More
Last night we broke the news that location-based mobile social network Loopt had acquired GraffitiGeo, a fellow Y Combinator-backed startup that launched only a few months ago. Neither company was willing to comment on the acqusition last night, but earlier today they finally confirmed it and opened up to share some of the logic behind the deal.
GraffitiGeo launched in August, when I described… → Read More
Loopt, the New Enterprise Associates and Sequoia-backed mobile social network, has acquired a relative newcomer to the scene – Y Combinator startup GraffitiGEO. Multiple sources have confirmed the acquisition, although neither company is commenting.
GraffitiGEO, which launched just a couple of months ago, combines mobile social networking with reviews and games. It’s somewhat similar to the… → Read More
At TechCrunch, we’ve always been big fans of mobile social networks, particularly on the iPhone. In fact, Loopt, one of the first location-based iPhone apps and social networks to gain popularity, was offered a feature, called Mix, that acts as a social compass that allows people to connect with and learn about others around them. Mix turned out to be such a popular feature that Loopt is breaking… → Read More
A location-based social network is not going to truly take off on the iPhone until it can run in the background. You know it, I know it, and even Loopt, which makes such an app, knows it. That’s why they’ve done something about it.
Beginning today, Loopt is rolling out a trial for background location on the iPhone. Yes, you read that right.
If you’ve been following the iPhone at all over the… → Read More
Loopt was the first location-based iPhone app to get a lot of buzz. It’s a social network that lets you keep track of where your friends are with the help of the iPhone’s GPS. Since it launched in the App Store on day 1 in July of last year, several other competitors have come along including Google with its Latitude service (though it’s not yet available on the iPhone). Now Loopt appears ready to… → Read More
In the nascent world of mobile social networking, there are the big dogs (Facebook and MySpace) and everyone who wants to be a big dog. Two of the puppies just got bigger. Limbo is buying Brightkite, which all the tech kids are raving about, in a nearly all-stock transaction. It will change its name to Brightkite in a re-branding move, and gain Brightkite’s engineering team and product smarts. … → Read More
Just a housekeeping item: the ridiculous patent infringement lawsuit brought against us and mobile social network Loopt (details here and here) by Earthcomber is history. The company walked away from the lawsuit.
We criticized being included in the lawsuit because we are nothing more than a search filter on Loopt. And the Earthcomber founder appeared to include us out of spite for not giving them… → Read More
Mobile social network Loopt goes live on three AT&T phones today, which was the last major carrier holdout. Loopt is now available in the U.S. on Sprint, Verizon, Metro PCS, T-Mobile and Boost. The service is free for a year and then a $4/month fee kicks in.
You can get Loopt for free on the iPhone (and there is a TechCrunch version), the Blackberry and Android as well.
We’re big believers… → Read More
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