Loopt

Last updated
Loopt, Inc.
Company type Private
Industry Geosocial networking, location-based services
Founded2005;19 years ago (2005)
Founders
Defunct2012 (2012)
FateAcquired by Green Dot Corporation
Headquarters Mountain View, California, US
Key people
Sam Altman (CEO)
Website www.loopt.com

Loopt, Inc. was an American company based in Mountain View, California, which provided a service for smartphone users to share their location selectively with other people. The service supported all the major mobile operating systems. Loopt's services had more than five million registered users and partnerships with every major U.S. mobile phone carrier. Their applications offered a variety of privacy controls. In addition to its core features, users also had the ability to integrate Loopt with other social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

Contents

The company was founded in 2005 and received initial funding from Y Combinator, [2] and completed Series A and B financing led by Sequoia Capital [3] and New Enterprise Associates. [4] The company's board members included TiVo-founder Mike Ramsay and Greg McAdoo of Sequoia Capital. [5] In March 2012 Loopt agreed to be acquired [6] by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million in cash, with $9.8 million of that to be set aside for employee retention. [7]

History

Initially called Radiate, [1] Loopt began with funding from Y Combinator. That summer, Stanford sophomores Sam Altman and Nick Sivo worked to build the first prototype of Loopt. They were later joined by Alok Deshpande as well as two of Sam's childhood friends, Rick & Tom Pernikoff. [2]

Loopt received US$5 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates and struck a deal to launch the service on Boost Mobile devices in September 2006. Boost Mobile featured Loopt in a series of commercials that are most known for the "Where you at?" tag line. [8]

In August 2007, Loopt expanded the service to select Sprint phones, and in June 2008, to Verizon. Loopt announced support for most GPS-enabled Blackberries on June 13, 2008. [9] Loopt received US$8.25 million in Series B funding in July 2007.

In February 2008, Loopt and CBS partnered to deliver location based advertising. [10] Seven months later, Loopt released an opt-in feature in Loopt's iPhone application, called Loopt Mix, which uses location-based services to enable iPhone users to find and meet new people nearby.

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2008, Altman presented the Loopt application for the iPhone. Loopt for the iPhone became available to US customers of the Apple iTunes App Store on July 11, 2008.

In the summer of 2008, Loopt sponsored Black20.com's The Middle Show with host Dave Price.

In October 2008, Loopt was sued by Earthcomber for patent infringement. [11] The case was dropped by Earthcomber in March 2009. [12]

In October 2009, Loopt acquired Y Combinator-backed startup GraffitiGeo for an undisclosed sum. [13]

In March 2010, Loopt launched an upgraded version of its iPhone app, [14] incorporating place and event information to its Pulse database, bringing in content from ZVents, Metromix, and SonicLiving. These are added to existing content partnerships with Citysearch, Zagat, and Bing.

In March 2010, Loopt launched a product called Loopt Pulse, exclusively designed for the iPad. [15]

In April 2010, Loopt launched an upgraded version of its BlackBerry app. [16] The upgraded version includes the same places and events upgrade formerly launched in March 2010 for iPhone users.

August 2010 saw Steve Boom taking over as president of the company.

In December 2010, Loopt launched Loopt version 4.0, which featured a completely updated design.

In March 2012, after raising more than $30M in venture capital, Loopt announced it had agreed to be acquired by Green Dot Corporation for US$43.4 million. [6]

SMS invitation issues

Users of Loopt must register their mobile phone number, full name, and date of birth. Loopt's privacy notice states that users can control who receives geo-location information via privacy settings.

When Loopt released its native iPhone application on July 10, 2008, the software quickly gained notoriety for sending Short Message Service (SMS) invites to users' address books, seemingly without the user's knowledge; additionally, the SMS service failed to respond to the industry required STOP message. [17]

On July 14, 2008, Loopt posted to its blog that the mass invites could be attributed to a confusing user interface, and they were working on an improved invitation flow. [18] Respect for STOP was announced July 15, 2008, [19] and on July 17, 2008, Loopt released an updated version which addressed the issues with the confusing user interface. [20]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 Gannes, Liz (2014-03-18). "Y Combinator's New Head Startup Whisperer Sam Altman Is Quite a Talker". Vox.
  2. 1 2 "Loopt: How it all began..." Archived from the original on 2009-01-19.
  3. ↑ "Sequoia Capital provides funding to Loopt". Archived from the original on 2007-12-10. Retrieved 2008-01-27.
  4. ↑ "New Enterprise Associates provides funding to Loopt". Archived from the original on 2008-09-14.
  5. ↑ "Loopt Board of Directors". Archived from the original on 2008-12-20.
  6. 1 2 "Green Dot to Acquire Loopt for $43.4M".
  7. ↑ http://allthingsd.com/20120309/green-dot-buys-location-app-loopt-for-43-4m/ "Loopt’s Sam Altman on Why He Sold to Green Dot for $43.4M"
  8. ↑ "Boost Loopt Commercial". YouTube . Archived from the original on 2021-12-13.
  9. ↑ "Loopt now supports Blackberry". Archived from the original on 2009-03-02.
  10. ↑ "Loopt and CBS Mobile Partner for GPS Location-Based Ads". Mashable . 6 February 2008.
  11. ↑ Earthcomber Cries Patent Infringement Against Loopt
  12. ↑ "Earthcomber drops patent lawsuit against TechCrunch, Loopt". 23 March 2009.
  13. ↑ "More Details On Loopt's Acquisition of GraffitiGeo". 22 October 2009.
  14. ↑ "Looking for something fun to do? Try the new Loopt Pulse". Archived from the original on 2010-03-15.
  15. ↑ "The Vision Behind Loopt Pulse". Archived from the original on 2010-04-11.
  16. ↑ "Plan your next move on the new Pulse on Loopt for BlackBerry". Archived from the original on 2010-04-18.
  17. ↑ "getsatisfaction.com: How can I never receive another Loopt SMS invitation ever?". Archived from the original on 2011-12-29.
  18. ↑ "Loopt In: iPhone Invite Confusion".
  19. ↑ "Loopt In: Improved iPhone Invites".
  20. ↑ "Loopt In: Get new version of Loopt for iPhone now!".[ permanent dead link ]

Related Research Articles

Plaxo was an online address book that launched in 2002. It was a subsidiary of cable television company Comcast from 2008 to 2017. At one point it offered a social networking service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile banking</span> Service provided by a bank

Mobile banking is a service provided by a bank or other financial institution that allows its customers to conduct financial transactions remotely using a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. Unlike the related internet banking it uses software, usually called an app, provided by the financial institution for the purpose. Mobile banking is usually available on a 24-hour basis. Some financial institutions have restrictions on which accounts may be accessed through mobile banking, as well as a limit on the amount that can be transacted. Mobile banking is dependent on the availability of an internet or data connection to the mobile device.

Truphone is a GSMA-accredited global mobile network that operates its service internationally. The company is headquartered in London and has offices in ten other countries, being spread across four continents.

eBuddy Instant messaging software

eBuddy is a privately held Dutch software company that offers instant messaging services. As of 2011, eBuddy reported 100 million downloads. The company's flagship service is XMS, a proprietary cross-platform instant messaging service. After some changes of ownership, the company is now again owned by its original founders, Onno Bakker and Jan-Joost Rueb.

Mobile porn, also known as mobile adult content, mobile erotica or cellphone adult content, is pornography transmitted over mobile telecommunications networks for consumption on mobile devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Voice</span> Telecommunications service by Google

Google Voice is a telephone service that provides a U.S. phone number to Google Account customers in the U.S. and Google Workspace customers in Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the contiguous United States. It is used for call forwarding and voicemail services, voice and text messaging, as well as U.S. and international calls. Calls are forwarded to the phone number that each user must configure in the account web portal. Users can answer and receive calls on any of the phones configured to ring in the web portal. While answering a call, the user can switch between the configured phones. Subscribers in the United States can make outgoing calls to domestic and international destinations. The service is configured and maintained by users in a web-based application, similar in style to Google's email service Gmail, or Android and iOS applications on smartphones or tablets.

Keek was a free online social networking service that allowed its users to upload video status updates, which were called "keeks". Users could post keeks to the Keek website using a webcam or via the Keek mobile apps for iPhone, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, or Android. Users could also reply back with text or video comments, known as "keekbacks", and share content to other major social media networks. There was also an embed option so users could embed their keeks into a blog or website.

Chikka, short for Chikka Text Messenger, was an Internet-based instant messaging application that supported free SMS or text messaging between online users and offline mobile subscribers. Chikka was released by Chikka Philippines, Inc. in 2000 and eventually established its connection with the country's network operators Smart Communications (2001), Globe Telecom (2002) and Sun Cellular (2004). With up to billions of messages being exchanged between online and mobile communities worldwide through Chikka, it is probably the world's first commercially successful integration of web and mobile utilities.

Google Latitude was a location-aware feature of Google Maps, developed by Google as a successor to its earlier SMS-based service Dodgeball. Latitude allowed a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location. Via their own Google Account, the user's cell phone location was mapped on Google Maps. The user could control the accuracy and details of what each of the other users can see — an exact location could be allowed, or it could be limited to identifying the city only. For privacy, it could also be turned off by the user, or a location could be manually entered. Users had to explicitly opt into Latitude and were only able to see the location of those friends who had decided to share their location with them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foursquare City Guide</span> Location-based social networking service

Foursquare City Guide, commonly known as Foursquare, is a local search-and-discovery mobile app developed by Foursquare Labs Inc. The app provides personalized recommendations of places to go near a user's current location based on users' previous browsing history and check-in history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Altman</span> American entrepreneur and investor (born 1985)

Samuel Harris Altman is an American entrepreneur and investor best known as the CEO of OpenAI since 2019. He is also the chairman of clean energy companies Oklo Inc. and Helion Energy. Altman is considered to be one of the leading figures of the AI boom. He dropped out of Stanford University after two years and founded Loopt, a mobile social networking service, raising more than $30 million in venture capital. In 2011, Altman joined Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, and was its president from 2014 to 2019.

Brightkite was a location-based social networking website. Users were able to "check in" at places by using text messaging or one of the mobile applications and they were able to see who is nearby and who has been there before. The service was created in 2007 by Brady Becker, Martin May, and Alan Seideman who previously founded the SMS notification service Loopnote. In April 2009 Brightkite was acquired by mobile social network Limbo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Posterous</span> Simple blogging platform

Posterous was a simple blogging platform started in May 2008. It supported integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, a built-in Google Analytics package, and custom themes. It was based in San Francisco and funded by Y Combinator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LinkedIn Pulse</span>

LinkedIn Pulse was a news aggregation app originally developed for Android, iOS and HTML5 browsers, originally released in 2010. The app, in its original incarnation, was deprecated in 2015 and integrated into LinkedIn.

SCVNGR (SCaVeNGeR) was a social location-based gaming platform for mobile phones. SCVNGR was part game, part game platform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bump (application)</span> Discontinued file sharing app

Bump was an iOS and Android mobile app that enabled smartphone users to transfer contact information, photos and files between devices. In 2011, it was #8 on Apple's list of all-time most popular free iPhone apps, and by February 2013 it had been downloaded 125 million times. Its developer, Bump Technologies, shut down the service and discontinued the app on January 31, 2014, after being acquired by Google for Google Photos and Android Camera.

Truecaller is a smartphone application that has features of caller ID, call-blocking, flash-messaging, call-recording, chat and voice by using the Internet. It requires users to provide a standard cellular mobile number for registering with the service. The app is available for Android and iOS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlanGrid</span>

PlanGrid is a construction productivity software designed for onsite construction workers. PlanGrid digitises blueprints. It features version control and collaboration tools such as field markups, progress photos and issues tracking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Upptalk</span> Proprietary voice-over-IP service and software application

Upptalk was a proprietary voice-over-IP service and software application that provided mobile phone numbers in the cloud and allows users to call or text any phone for free whether or not the device receiving the calls and texts has the Yuilop application. The service was discontinued in 2017 and even its domain was abandoned.

Kamcord was a social media platform where users post and interact through video content from their mobile devices. Kamcord has pioneered a new content format called "shots," short videos or stills of a user's phone screen annotated with facecam, voice commentary, text, highlighting/drawing, animations, and other tools.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.