Future of [mobile] social networking --- is this Loopt?

techcrunch.com

19 points·wumi··8 comments

Similar to Nokia Sensor (which used Bluetooth) and Mobule, an MIT Media spinoff. Third time's the charm, I guess.

Seems unlikely, as it appears to be an iPhone app.

On the contrary, iPhones are a great way to get around the network lockin they've sort of fell into.

Now that Loopt is network agnostic, I'm sure they're developing an iPhone app, even if this isn't it.

Do you think Loopt would ignore the iPhone?

No, of course not. I just thought that the product in the article is exclusively for iPhone, whereas Loopt is also available for other device. So it seemed unlikely that they are the same product.

i dont think arrington understands mobile at all ... mobilecrunch has always been awful, this piece puts waaay too much weight on the iphone - its a tiny proportion of the mobile installed base.

I have to disagree. I think Arrington's got the direction right - whether this is the killer app or not is left to be seen.

Its also not about the iPhone but about what the iPhone represents - a whole new way of making the web and networking personal and portable. Right now the iPhone is the platform that is currently deployed that really gets it, but Google's Android platform and the Nokia Maemo platforms are right behind. In fact Android may not be as pretty but its direct to the middleware access may actually may be a platform thats more accessible for developers.

of course I'm biased my YC application is directly in this space ;-) but I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think its the real Web 3.0

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