Want to keep tabs on your friends when you’re out for a night on the town? How about allowing your friends to keep tabs on you, all without hassle? No problem! You can easily do this now with a service called Loopt on your Sprint mobile phone.
Loopt is a “social mapping” service that helps people stay in touch with friends via GPS. You’ll be able to see where your friends are, and they will be able to see where you are. The one thing that is most appealing about this service is that the process is automated – no wasted time updating your location. Every 15 minutes, your location updates. Not only will you be able to easily keep up with the location of your friends, you can also share photos with their location, share status messages, and get alerts when your friends are nearby.
The service, which could almost be considered on the verge of stalkerish, will be available on 25 different Sprint phones. Previously Loopt was available on Boost Mobile phones, but the deal with Sprint is the first agreement Loopt has made with a major U.S. carrier. This is one of those situations where you’d want to be extra cautious about who you’re going to allow to follow you. It’s social networking in a different form which could certainly have its uses, but unfortunately it won’t be included with your regular monthly fees. You’ll have to pay an additional $2.99 per month to stay in the Loop with your friends.
With Sprint joining in on the “social networking,” I’m sure other major carriers will join in as well so that it will be easier for everybody to answer the “where are you” question, (which is such a common reason to place a phone call) without ever needing to place a call or send a text message.
Source: VentureBeat
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Tags: General
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Wow, that does seem rather stalkerish. Quite impressive though, hope they’d let you temporarily disable it if you didn’t want to be found. From what I was reading yesterday, updates to Twitter from IM or SMS will be able to record your location as well, so if people updated from mobile regularly enough you could track them for free with that.
Isn’t it bad enough that so many people have to have their cell glued to their head wherever they go? And now some are so socially dependent they need the virtual sense that they are never alone. Is there a person left out there that can go through their day by themselves and not need the constant hand holding of the never ending cell phone conversation?
“We are just monkeys with car keys.”
I can’t remember who said it but it certainly rings true.
It is amazing how mobile devices have changed the lives of many people. I guess you never have to worry about being lonely that way.