Loopt Location Based IM Becoming the Life of the Party

loopt location based im

With their announcement yesterday at F8 that they will be adding Facebook connect integration to their existing location based IM client, Loopt has found another way to help us connect with our friends in real time and see where they are located.

Loopt started out by adding location technology to an AIM client for your phone. This elegant method of tapping into your existing network of friends builds context over the existing IM network and makes it a very easy technology to adopt. Until this year, they were mostly tied to Sprint and Boost mobile which gave them limited reach in terms of the network effect. This means that your friends may not be on the service and may not even be able to sign up.

This year, Loopt has released clients for both the iPhone and Blackberry. These were especially prudent moves in growing their US market share for two reasons. Blackberry has the largest share of the US smartphone market of all handset manufacturers and the iPhone 3G’s built in GPS is becoming the platform of choice for new location based applications.

Loopt also announced a location based ad targeting platform last month. This platform allows users to place targeted banner ads on mobile web sites based on a users’ location. This allows advertisers to target users based on both location and recency which can provide a dramatic edge in the burgeoning mobile advertising marketplace.

Tapping into Facebook Connect is a really interesting move. Loopt currently supports AIM and you might assume that they would work to support other IM networks. However, with Facebook as one of the top mobile web sites in the US, I think this is a really shrewd move that should allow users to connect with many more of their friends than virtually anything else. And Loopt itnegrate text messaging so you can just text your friends instead of IM.

Now Loopt is becoming a community of their own. By providing a status feature, journals and events, they’re allowing users to connect on the Loopt network rather than simply adding maps to an IM client. It would be cool to see a Loopt client for Windows Mobile, and it might make sense for them now that more Pocket PCs are starting to include GPS. Or maybe I should just get break down and get the iPhone 3G I’ve been eyeballing.

Here’s a screenshot of how Facebook fits into the Loopt community:

theregoesdave

Life on the move.