Verizon Wireless Offers Loopt Social Mapping Service
Verizon announced they will offer Loopt social mapping to their wireless subscribers. Loopt’s location based service lets people share their location using mobile maps, tag content (such as photos) with location information and send information to blogs and other online properties. As we are seeing with other serivces, Loopt has privacy features to allow users to maintain control over their location data. The service, which will only be available on specific handsets (presumably GPS enabled ones), will cost $3.99 per month.
As with the other services, we’ll be watching to see if Loopt provides any opportunities for marketers. This isn’t about bombarding consumers with messages about MacDonald’s around the corner but providing information people want. For example, you may want to sign up for a Starbuck’s service that let’s you know when a friend is in a nearby Starbuck’s.
