Add Location to your Tweets!

If you're a Twitter fan, you'll like this news.

The Tweets you make via Loopt now have location! A link to a map of where you are will follow every tweet you make via Loopt on your iPhone. Clicking on the link will take you to your location on Google Maps.

For example, San Francisco-based Mada is visiting her best friend and his family down in Texas this weekend. Mada's friends in California are curious to see what Mada's up to and where she is. So they simply follow the link and are taken to a map showing her location. Pretty cool!

We hope this added dimension of location will make your Twittering experience more enjoyable. We've been listening to your Twitter notes and know it's something you've wanted for a while!

Enjoy!

MobileBeat 2008: Best Mobile App!

Hooray! We are happy to announce that we've been selected by MobileBeat 2008 as the Best Overall Mobile App!

In addition, our CEO, Sam Altman, has been selected as the "Best Mobile Person Under 35".

Pretty cool!

Thanks, VentureBeat, for supporting us and rooting us on! What a great way to wrap up a fantastic week!

MobileBeat 2008 and TechCrunch Party

A quick update on Loopt's whereabouts this week!

First, Captain Sam is giving a keynote at VentureBeat's MobileBeat 2008 today. We have been recognized as a top 10 mobile company based on public votes! Thank you very much, everyone!

Second, this Friday, Loopt will be at TechCrunch's annual party, this time held at August Capital.

At both places, we'll be talking about social mapping, upcoming products, and the future of Loopt and the mobile space.

If you're going to either, we look forward to meeting you!

Loopt teams up with Facebook Connect!

Find your Facebook friends whenever they're nearby!

Today Loopt began working with Facebook Connect to allow users to "connect" their Facebook identity and friends. 

Combining Facebook Connect with Loopt will let users share and discover recommendations for nearby businesses, integrate location awareness into their Facebook feeds, and easily find and connect with Facebook friends both on and offline – as their Facebook privacy settings will allow of course. 

Look for the new features to be available to iPhone users in late summer and on BlackBerry and feature phones across Verizon, Sprint Nextel and Boost Mobile shortly after that. 

See here for the full press release.

Friday Photo Ops!

Fridays are fun days at the Loopt office. We have our all hands lunch at noon and Katie and Nini always manage to get treats for us (like Jamba Juice this time!), in addition to deli sandwiches and yummy cookies and brownies.

We had another treat today -- company photos! Eric, our location technologies guru, and savvy photographer, snapped some great shots of us:

All hands on board!

Silly geese!

How could we resist?

Get new version of Loopt for iPhone now!

Hi everyone!

An updated version of Loopt for the iPhone is now available at the AppStore. Please follow the link to download it to your iPhone.

This version fixes a number of issues we've been facing and which you have expressed. Please download this version for a smoother experience with Loopt. The main updates include:

• A clearer friend invite flow which makes it more explicit which friends you are inviting
• Elimination of multiple SMS messages on one invite
• Increased location accuracy for 3G iPhones

Here are the AppStore pages you will see before you download Loopt, and they contain all the changes we've made.

      

We appreciate your feedback and have been burning the midnight oil (and more) to get everything fixed. Many thanks to the whole Loopt team for the dedicated effort -- this fast turnaround is a result of listening to you, the user, and rolling things around on our end.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at support@loopt.com. We are all ears.

Our best,

The Loopt Team

iPhone Invite Update

Hi All.  Thank you again for all the constructive feedback.  We’re working hard to digest all the incoming comments and questions and make changes to the Loopt service where needed. We’ve also enjoyed  hearing from everyone out there having fun with Loopt to stay connected with friends.

Just wanted to let you know that the team is still hard at work testing the changes to the iPhone invite process and we plan to get that out to you very soon. All friend invites from the iPhone have been temporarily disabled so that we can fix the issue more quickly. In the meantime, you can still login from the website and invite friends. We will keep you posted on the status.

As always, please feel free to contact us at support@loopt.com.

Improved iPhone Invites

Sorry, everyone. Our bad.

We’ve received a lot of feedback over the past few days regarding the new Loopt friend-invitation process. Loopt takes privacy and user feedback very seriously, and we are especially sensitive to doing anything that makes our users unhappy.

The Loopt team has been working around the clock to respond to these issues, gather input and improve the Loopt service as quickly as possible. Thanks for letting us know what you do and don’t like.

Yesterday, we started hearing that people were unhappy with the way we sent invites to current Loopt users already in your phonebook. If a user clicked the "Who's on Loopt button", we checked his or her phone book for other Loopt users. The mistake we made was automatically selecting them, so if the user then hit Send, they might inadvertently send more invites than they meant to. We immediately disabled that feature. We don’t store your contact list, and it should go without saying we would never sell it or share it with a third party.

We now have a much better invite process. It’s beginning our testing process now and will be available soon. We’ve included a screenshot so you can see how it works.

With the first option, users can send an invitation text by directly entering the number of someone he/she knows.  The second option allows you to see which of your contacts are already on Loopt, on a Loopt-supported carrier, or on a non-Loopt supported carrier.  None of the contacts are automatically selected.  If the friend is already on Loopt, the application allows you to send a friend request to him/her.  The third option simply allows you to view your contact list without any Loopt labels about whether or not they are on Loopt or on a Loopt-supported carrier.  As with option two, you select the contacts to whom you want to send text invites.

Finally, many people that don’t want Loopt have written that they’d like to stop receiving invitations to the service from their friends. Loopt itself never initiates an SMS to you, but if you don’t want to get any from your friends either, we’ve made it even easier to let us know you never want another SMS from us—just send STOP to any Loopt-related message you get. As always, you can email us at privacy@loopt.com and we’ll take care of it.

Thank you again for your feedback and please keep it coming. We hope you will continue to use Loopt.  And thanks also to the people who write to let us know how much they love the service.  For more information about Loopt’s privacy practices, please visit http://www.loopt.com/about/privacy-security. If you have more questions, I’d love to hear them. Please drop me a note at altman@loopt.com .

Sorry again,
Sam

iPhone Invite Confusion

Hi all,

A couple of folks have recently blogged that Loopt automatically spams your contacts with invites. We wanted to let everyone know that 1) we apologize for the confusion and unintended invites and 2) this issue has been fixed.

Just so you know, here is what happened:

When you clicked the “Who’s on Loopt” button, all of your contacts that are current Loopt users were auto-selected to receive invites. A total count of people receiving invites appeared at the bottom of the screen. However, we have since disabled that functionality due to customer feedback and confusion. We are working on an improved invite flow that will include an invite confirmation screen that will be released very soon.

Again, our bad completely. We hope you’ll continue to use Loopt – and provide us with feedback.  If you have any further concerns or questions, please don't hesitate to email (support@loopt.com) us.

Thanks!
Loopt

--
Update, July 16, 2008: Hi guys, an update from Sam about invites. Please follow the link below and let us know if you have any questions.

Yelp and Loopt Link: New Features on the iPhone

Not only are we excited to launch on the iPhone, we’re also enthused to announce two fantastic features on the first Loopt iPhone version!

 

Yelp: Local Search, Content, and Reviews

   

How many times have you wandered around a new place with friends and wondered where you could grab a good burger? Or a fabulous cup of froyo? When Loopt teamed up with Yelp, these were the types of questions we wanted to answer for you. On the Friend Map, you can search for local restaurants, bars, and other points of interest, and easily decide where you want to go based on Yelp ratings and comments. Even better, as you pan the map, the pins automatically bubble up so you can decide whether you want the natural flavors of Fraiche in Palo Alto or the schmancy green tea shaved ice of Gelayo Gusto in Mountain View.

Oftentimes, it’s better to go with places from trusted friends. Do you have that friend who knows exactly what’s hot? Check out his or her comments on Loopt, and put some of your own about places, too!

     

^ Check out what your friends have to say about a place. Any comments you make about places are also featured in your journal.

Loopt Link

We recognize the importance of syncing up your online and mobile life so your friends who are out partying with you in San Francisco or online 2000 miles away know what’s up with you. We’ve integrated with Facebook and Twitter, and any updates you make to Loopt will appear on your Twitter feed or on Facebook. RSS Feeds are also coming, so hold on tight!

^ In Settings, you'll find the ability to Link to existing popular social services, Twitter and Facebook.

^ After you link Loopt with Twitter, any status updates you make on Loopt will sync with your Twitter feed. You write your status ("hi twitter") and Loopt will automatically add your location!