Loopt

Sector: Mobile applications, social networking

Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA

Management: Founder and CEO Sam Altman founded Loopt during his sophomore year at Stanford University.

Funding: Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates ($5 million)

Secret Sauce: Recently out of stealth mode, early funded Loopt launched its service to the world in early September. Loopt uses GPS and other data to display the location of users’ friends, along with their “availability” status (available, away, and so on) on maps and lists. Users can request alerts when friends are within a certain distance, send messages to groups of friends within a certain distance, and tag and blog physical locations in a way that’s accessible to friends through Loopt’s service.

While the service is initially available only to Boost Mobile customers, Loopt plans on opening up as soon as January as an add-on mobile service to more networks. While the technology for GPS phone tracking has been available for awhile, it’s not well-known or advertised to most consumers. And, while services are beginning to be marketed to worried parents of roaming teenagers, the “value” of such a service isn’t really perceived as a high priority to the mobile-phone clutching IM generation.

Loopt’s smart–yes really smart–decision to partner exclusively with Boost gives the service a street cred that’s been missing from the Disney Channel versions of similar products. The company’s user interface makes the data seem important, relevant, and intriguing, even though it’s an already available function on most newer hardware.

SMS has been a raging torrent in Europe and Asia (where it’s typically less expensive than voice to voice), and is finally hitting the big time with youth and early adopters in the U.S. looking for quick ways to communicate and fill their moments of microboredom. Mashing in mobile presence could definitely sweeten the deal for the popular crowd.

Loopt is seriously intended as a closed network meant to be used with good and trusted friends. But within your clique, family, or workgroup, the value is real. As is the fun factor? I’m thinking scavenger hunt in the city, baby!

Seen and Heard: TechCrunch’s Marshall Kirkpatrick says, “I can definitely imagine going downtown to work at a coffee shop, requesting notification if any of my friends came within a few miles of me and having all the more access to the people I know and want to spend time with.” Wired Magazine’s crystal ball revealed in September 2005, “His [Altman's] fledgling company is close to signing a deal to test his location-based social-networking software with one of the country’s largest cell-phone providers, and is in talks with prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms.”