Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Loopt to make mobile presence usable Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Techcrunch reported today that Loopt have launched a US based paid-for service that utilises GPS enabled phones to allow you to locate your "buddies" that have agreed to disclose their location and that sends you alerts when they are close proximity.
I always felt that such a service was inevitable once the technology got cheap and small enough. Whilst concurring with Dead 2.0 in the notion that sometimes you won't want to reveal your location, I actually think this will be a very popular service. Myspacers in particular are going to snap this up, albeit how they will cope tracking their 107,932 myspace friends simultaneously.......
Is it likely that such data might be shared outside your approved list ? - well, law enforcement agencies are going to certainly be able to get this data and undoubtedly it would help them to locate meetings between conspiritors assuming of course that they are dumb enough to use this service whilst not wanting to be snooped upon.
Other than that, its a logical next step to see location based commerce and advertising start to encroach into this space. This is clearly going to have to be opt in marketing, unless of course the users gets free phone minutes/texts in exchange for receiving unsolicited location based adverts - as a model this has been used albeit how long customers actually put up with it is less clear.
posted by John Wilson @ 9:20 AM Permanent Link
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