Entries Tagged 'Loopt' ↓

One of the most intriguing geolocation services made a major announcement today. Steve Boom, who spent 10 years as Yahoo’s Senior Vice President, was announced as Loopt’s new president.

Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of Loopt, had some intriguing things to say about their newly-named president:

He’s grown mobile companies from upstarts to established brands, helping them reach new levels of user engagement and monetization. I fully expect him to do the same for Loopt.

Among the mobile startups that Boom has been put in charge of, mig33 is one of his most successful. According to the Loopt blog, Boom will continue to serve as the chairman of the company, based in Singapore.

Back in July, TechCrunch reported that Loopt had passed the four million user mark, so Loopt is no pushover when it comes to location-based services. While Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places continue to grow, Loopt clearly understands its’ place in a continuously growing and competitive field.

Do you believe that the addition of Steve Boom will help Loopt reach new heights with their location-based service?

(Picture Credit: Loopt Blog)

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How does a few free songs a week sound to you? If you’re a fan of receiving free tunes for checking in, Loopt Star may just be what you are looking for.

Loopt’s newest checkin platform will reward users with music for their checkins to specific bars.

Fans of Top 40 radio will really like the artist list they’ve prepared for the debut week. Lady Gaga, La Roux, Miley Cyrus, Mos Def and Taio Cruz are among the first batch of artists. According to Billboard, Loopt plans on refreshing the songs every Tuesday.

While Foursquare has a badge system in place, Loopt is taking it one step further and offering actual incentives that should appeal to a wide range of music fans across the country. Could this set a precedent for future geolocation reward systems? It is certainly possible, but it remains to be seen if offering free music as an incentive will encourage people to check in at Loopt’s given checkpoints.

If geolocation websites offered real-life incentives like Loopt is currently doing, would you be more inclined to use them? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

With geolocation platforms, you don’t always know where your friends are at all points in the day. While this is OK for most people, what about that busy Friday night where you want to know where all of your friends are in your city?

Loopt added a new “ping-all” feature in their latest application update, which appears to be a very useful tool for acquiring the location of all of your friends when you want to know it the most.

Once the feature is activated, a notification is sent to all friends asking them to update their current location. As friends enter their data (assuming they are near a phone that can receive the notifications), the information is relayed back to the original user who initiated the ping.

Other additional features added to the latest update of Loopt was the addition of the Background Location switch on the main screen, as well as additional search and filter options when searching the map.

The addition of the ping-all feature is a big step for Loopt, and it will be interesting to see how many people start using the system for the functionality. Adding notifications for your friends to update their location will allow the user to be even more connected to their social networks.

Are you a user of Loopt? What are your thoughts on the newest update?