www.itsnearme.com: Get into the mobile social networking loop with Loopt: Print This

Loopt is a GPS enabled mobile social network available to Sprint, Boost Mobile and Verizon subscribers. It allows users to see their friends' current location, alert their friends when they are nearby and enables them to communicate by tagging places and sharing local recommendations

After downloading Loopt to the mobile phone and registering to the service, a user can invite his friends to join his network in a similar process to web-based social networks, using mobile phone numbers instead of email addresses.

The service displays a map with an orange dot representing the user's location and green dots for his friends' current locations.
A user can create places (recommendations) that will show up on his friends' maps and he can view places that his friends recommended.

Loopt offers a few other cool features like organizing social events and creating journals (upload location pictures and comments). For privacy, users can create levels of permissions and allow only some of their friends to see their location activity.

Loopt’s slogans – “Find your friends fast” and “Where you at?” sum up the service, it is a cutting edge LBS that performs well with great accuracy but it has several shortcomings; in order for a social network service to succeed, it has to attract users, currently the service is offered only to Sprint, Boost Mobile and Verizon subscribers so if most of your friends use other providers you will not be able to connect with them.

In Addition, the service costs $4 a month and it’s hard to expand your network when you invite friends to use a paid LBS social network especially since there are other competitors such as uLocate’s Buddy Beacon and GyPSii (some of which are free).

How to use this service?

Pros:

Cons:

Check it out: www.loopt.com

What's the damage? $4/month

Coverage area: USA

Access requirements: Mobile phone & PC with internet connection

ItsNearMe rating: 4 out of 5

Mar 30, 2008 01:07 PM:

This is the future folks. Maybe not "Loopt" exactly but social location based services are going to change everything.