Yesterday, Verizon Wireless (which I'll be referring to as VZW, as per usual) announced that it will begin offering Loopt service to its customers for $4 per month. This is a huge, huge, huge announcement for Loopt because this is only the second distinct carrier to offer their product. Loopt was originally (and is still predominantly) offered by Boost mobile. Yes, it is now available to Sprint's CDMA users, but Boost is the iDEN prepaid network which is owned by Sprint. Also, VZW has a lot more subscribers than Sprint and Boost combined (Sprint is at about 53.8 million subscribers, Boost about 4 million and VZW at about 65.7 million).
For anyone who doesn't know what Loopt is (if this is you I should probably also say "Welcome to Capitol Valley!"), it is a location-based service (LBS) that allows you to use your mobile phone to share your location with your friends. I'm pretty sure you've seen the ads with the very round people asking each other "Where you at?" That's Loopt. Some other guy wrote about them too.
Some people bring up the privacy issue, but Loopt is 100% opt in. It can be purchased directly from your handset, but it (and most services that you can subscribe to via the handset) would be almost impossible to sign up by accident. It's a really cool service that's been really well marketed and implemented. Also, Andrew interviewed their chief privacy officer, Brian Knapp. The fact that they have a chief privacy officer and that they send him apparently everywhere shows an amazing self-awareness of the fact that a lot of people could look at them as a privacy cluster-fudge.
That self-awareness coupled with a great product is why Loopt is now offered by both major CDMA carriers and available to over 100 million subscribers.
Not too shabby for a three-year-old.
Here is VZW's press release.
Here's "some other guy"'s article. Actually, it's CongressDaily's Andrew Noyes.
And here is our Andrew's interview with Brian Knapp.
For anyone who doesn't know what Loopt is (if this is you I should probably also say "Welcome to Capitol Valley!"), it is a location-based service (LBS) that allows you to use your mobile phone to share your location with your friends. I'm pretty sure you've seen the ads with the very round people asking each other "Where you at?" That's Loopt. Some other guy wrote about them too.
Some people bring up the privacy issue, but Loopt is 100% opt in. It can be purchased directly from your handset, but it (and most services that you can subscribe to via the handset) would be almost impossible to sign up by accident. It's a really cool service that's been really well marketed and implemented. Also, Andrew interviewed their chief privacy officer, Brian Knapp. The fact that they have a chief privacy officer and that they send him apparently everywhere shows an amazing self-awareness of the fact that a lot of people could look at them as a privacy cluster-fudge.
That self-awareness coupled with a great product is why Loopt is now offered by both major CDMA carriers and available to over 100 million subscribers.
Not too shabby for a three-year-old.
Here is VZW's press release.
Here's "some other guy"'s article. Actually, it's CongressDaily's Andrew Noyes.
And here is our Andrew's interview with Brian Knapp.
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