Boost Mobile has launced loopt, is a Palo Alto-based startup that has built a revolutionary "social mapping" service to change the way people use mobile phones to keep in touch with their friends.
loopt uses GPS (and other location technology) to show you where your friends are by automatically updating maps on your mobile handset.
loopt also lets you send messages to nearby friends or receive automatic alerts when they're nearby so that you never miss an opportunity to meet. With loopt, mobile subscribers put themselves on the map.
Recently, Helio launched a similar feature in their new Drift handset called Buddy Beacon.
Sam Altman, a sophomore at Stanford University, founded Loopt last year after developing software that allowed GPS-enabled Java phones to automatically answer the two questions he says people most commonly ask when they make a call or send a text message: Where are you, and what are you doing? Boost Mobile, Sprint Nextel's youth-oriented pay-as-you-go mobile phone service based on Nextel's GPS-enabled iDEN network, has worked out an exclusive agreement to market the service, which it calls Boost Loopt.
Boost Mobile customers can download Boost Loopt on its existing Java- and GPS-enable handsets. Once you activate the service, Boost Loopt can use GPS to locate you and others who subscribe to the service and have accepted your Boost Loopt invitation to list them as friends. The application can automatically update your location periodically in the background, or you can choose to update your location manually or set it at a fixed point.
When Boost Loopt is running, a map appears on screen showing your own location. Up and down hardware navigation controls on your handset cycle through your friends' locations, from nearest to farthest or from farthest to nearest. Left and right navigation buttons control the zoom view of the map.
