Loopt

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Loopt is a company based in Mountain View, California. It provides a cellphone-based GPS sharing system with the goal of providing an innovative social mapping tool that allows friends to visualize one another using their cell phones and share information about interesting places. Loopt is available on Boost Mobile, Sprint Nextel, select BlackBerry devices, and the 3G iPhone. Loopt also provides a location platform solutions.

The company was founded by Sam Altman, a computer science major at Stanford University. Altman, along with friends and students from Stanford and MIT, wrote the software that runs the system. In 2005 the small Loopt team received funding from Y Combinator, an early stage investment company that helps young entrepreneurs get past the challenges of starting a business. Loopt has completed Series A and B financing led by Sequoia Capital ^[1] and New Enterprise Associates.

Loopt shows users where friends are located and what they are doing via detailed, interactive maps on their mobile phones. Loopt helps friends connect on the fly and navigate their social lives by orienting them to people, places and events. Users can also share location updates, geo-tagged photos and comments with friends in their mobile address book or on online social networks, communities and blogs. Loopt was designed with user privacy at its core and offers a variety of effective and intuitive privacy controls.

In February 2008, Loopt and CBS did a deal to deliver location-based advertisements. Although the industry seemed generally excited about the announcement, it's unclear how consumers will react to this new form of advertising.

At WWDC 2008 (Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference) on June 9, 2008, Loopt announced it is going to integrate with the iPhone. The Loopt application will be available for free at the launch of the App Store.