willz

I disagree.

Startups succeed and fail for many reasons. For example, lot of startups fail simply because the idea doesn't work, not execution. Read the "black swan" book, the single most important reason for failure or success is actually luck. Keep tinkering with things, and you may get lucky.

Thanks for being my first replier. You can't have privacy when you want to socialize. Philosophically, I find the "social media" ironical - they work to avoid people meeting each other.

By far the biggest opportunity for loopt is in dating. Dating, like mating, requires "signals". Suppose a guy going to a party, and receives a cell phone signal that a girl in the room is in dating mode, how cool that will be? $3/month is probably too cheap for sending and get those signals.

In general, an ice breaker is always needed in socializing (dating is the biggest subset). Loopt can be it.

I was browsing hacker news in Dana st coffee house in downtown Mountain View. A guy stopped by my side and said "oh you are reading ycombinator ... my name is Sam Altman." Sam is the loopt founder.

I really liked what he did - to seize an opportunity to meet a real person. He could just pass by and we will just meet each other in ycobminator as virtual beings, but he chose to meet me for real.

I didn't know anything about loopt before this. So I looked at it today and I must say I would laugh at the idea if Sam didn't do what he did today.

To me, I would never use loopt for knowing where my friends are. They are already my friends so I would just call them if I want to meet them and so do they.

What I see loopt as an useful app is for the occasions such as today in that coffee house.

Sam talked to me because he saw me reading hacker news, and he likes meeting real person because that's what loopt is about. Combine these two aspects, an real useful application is to allow a virtual community, like the hacker news community, to meet each other in physical world. Instead of tracking your friends, loopt becomes really exciting if it can make you meet new friends.

Loopt can also show where potential friends often go to. Suppose I want to meet other hacker news users, I can check on the map where they often visit and I can go there to meet them. That will be really interesting too, meeting new friends that is.

Sam, I hope you are reading this.

The article amounts to saying one thing, streaming is getting popular.

But so what? People will still buy a house even if they can also rent it. Renting and owning will always coexist.

Also, if streaming gets popular, then a million people will be doing it. So, instead of putting up a mp3 for download, now people will use some streaming service to stream it. What do the label companies get? They have the same piracy and control issue like before.