Loopt Location To Update In The Background On iPhone
Loopt, a location-based social networking service, will be the first third-party iPhone service to work in the background while the app is not running. — Via a deal with AT&T, and with your permission, Loopt will be able to access …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the payoff to an arc the corpus has tracked for a year: TechCrunch's September 2008 survey of location-based social networking on the iPhone found every player stymied by Apple's no-background-apps policy, and the November 2008 follow-up noted Loopt pulling ahead of Facebook and MySpace on the device (Loopt jumps ahead of Facebook and MySpace). Today's news is how Loopt converted that lead into a structural advantage — not through an SDK change from Apple, but by going around it with a direct carrier deal.
First-order effects
- Loopt's iPhone app can now update friends' locations continuously while closed — the first third-party service granted this — making its check-in feed genuinely live where rivals' apps only know where you were when you last opened them.
- AT&T gets a flagship demo of what its exclusive two-year hold on the iPhone can deliver beyond hardware sales, useful positioning while it fields complaints about dropped calls in New York and San Francisco and a Louisiana class action over delayed MMS support.
Second-order effects
- Facebook and MySpace now face a visible feature gap on the platform they were early to, pressuring them to negotiate similar carrier-level arrangements rather than wait on Apple to widen background access for everyone.
- Other carriers watching the deal learn that device-capability access can be sold as a partnership perk, adding a new bargaining chip to carrier-platform negotiations just as AT&T also tightens terms elsewhere (mandatory smartphone data plans from September 6th).
Third-order effects
- If capability access flows through carrier deals rather than the OS vendor alone, the carrier becomes a second gatekeeper between developers and iPhone features — a precedent that reshapes who sets platform rules and how users are asked to consent.
- Opt-in background location establishes the template for continuous ambient data collection on phones: user-permission dialogs become the load-bearing privacy control, and whatever defaults Apple and carriers settle will define the norm for the whole app ecosystem.
The trend: Mobile platforms are opening their most sensitive capabilities — location chief among them — through selective, negotiated deals rather than uniform developer access, making permissions and partnerships, not code, the real moat.