computer science

Loopt

Loopt is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Loopt rather than just read about it. In short: Loopt, Inc. was an American company based in Mountain View, California, which provided a service for smartphone users to share their location selectively with other people. The company entered partnerships with major U.S. mobile phone carriers including Verizon Wireless and Sprint-Nextel to include Loopt on their handsets and the service reached 4 million registered users in July 2010.

Key takeaways

Loopt belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Loopt to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Loopt from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Loopt, Inc. was an American company based in Mountain View, California, which provided a service for smartphone users to share their location selectively with other people. The company entered partnerships with major U.S. mobile phone carriers including Verizon Wireless and Sprint-Nextel to include Loopt on their handsets and the service reached 4 million registered users in July 2010. In addition to its core features, users also had the ability to integrate Loopt with other social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. The company was founded in 2005 and received initial funding from Y Combinator, and completed Series A and B financing led by Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates. The company's board members included TiVo-founder Mike Ramsay and Greg McAdoo of Sequoia Capital. In March 2012 Loopt agreed to be acquired by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million in cash, with $9.8 million of that to be set aside for employee retention.

History Initially called Radiate, Loopt began with funding from Y Combinator. That summer, Stanford sophomores Sam Altman and Nick Sivo worked to build the first prototype of Loopt. They were later joined by Alok Deshpande as well as two of Sam's childhood friends, Rick & Tom Pernikoff. Loopt received US$5 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates and struck a deal to launch the service on Boost Mobile devices in September 2006. Boost Mobile featured Loopt in a series of commercials that are most known for the "Where you at?" tag line. In August 2007, Loopt expanded the service to select Sprint phones, and in June 2008, to Verizon. Loopt announced support for most GPS-enabled Blackberries on June 13, 2008. Loopt received US$8.25 million in Series B funding in July 2007. In February 2008, Loopt and CBS partnered to deliver location-based advertising. Seven months later, Loopt released an opt-in feature in Loopt's iPhone application, called Loopt Mix, which uses location-based services to enable iPhone users to find and meet new people nearby. At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2008, Altman presented the Loopt application for the iPhone. Loopt for the iPhone became available to US customers of the Apple iTunes App Store on July 11, 2008. In the summer of 2008, Loopt sponsored Black20's The Middle Show with host Dave Price. In October 2008, Loopt was sued by Earthcomber for patent infringement. The case was dropped by Earthcomber in March 2009. In October 2009, Loopt acquired Y Combinator-backed startup GraffitiGeo for an undisclosed sum. In March 2010, Loopt launched an upgraded version of its iPhone app, incorporating place and event information to its Pulse database, bringing in content from ZVents, Metromix, and SonicLiving. These are added to existing content partnerships with Citysearch, Zagat, and Bing. In March 2010, Loopt launched a product called Loopt Pulse, exclusively designed for the iPad. In April 2010, Loopt launched an upgraded version of its BlackBerry app. The upgraded version includes the same places and events upgrade formerly launched in March 2010 for iPhone users. August 2010 saw Steve Boom taking over as president of the company. In December 2010, Loopt launched Loopt version 4.0, which featured a completely updated design. In March 2012, after raising more than $30 million in venture capital, Loopt announced it had agreed to be acquired by Green Dot Corporation for US$43.4 million in a deal that was most likely orchestrated as a marriage of convenience by joint investor Sequoia Capital, with its products to be shut down at an unspecified date.

SMS invitation issues Users of Loopt had to register their mobile phone number, full name, and date of birth. Loopt's privacy notice stated that users could control who receives geo-location information via privacy settings. When Loopt released its native iPhone application on July 10, 2008, the software quickly gained notoriety for sending Short Message Service (SMS) invites to users' address books, seemingly without the user's knowledge; additionally, the SMS service failed to respond to the industry-required STOP message. On July 14, 2008, Loopt posted to its blog that the mass invites could be attributed to a confusing user interface, and they were working on an improved invitation flow. Respect for STOP was announced July 15, 2008, and on July 17, 2008, Loopt released an updated version which addressed the issues with the confusing user interface.

See also Find My Life360 Location awareness Mobile phone tracking

Notes

References

External links Official website at the Wayback Machine (archived 2008-12-16)

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Loopt

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Loopt claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Loopt before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Loopt ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Loopt

In research: Loopt appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Loopt in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Loopt is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2005 establishments in California, 2012 disestablishments in California, 2012 mergers and acquisitions, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Loopt outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Loopt in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Loopt means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Loopt out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Loopt in simple terms?

Why does Loopt matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Loopt?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Loopt.