Foursquare

http://www.foursquare.com

Foursquare is a location based social networking service, mostly used with smartphones (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm, and so on).  It allows you to share your location with your friends, so you can “check-in” every time you get to a bar, restaurant, or shopping mall.  The cool yet slightly creepy part is that your friends can see exactly where you are on a Foursquare map.

Most people might think this is a safety issue or that a stalker might have easy access to where you are, but only your Foursquare “Check-In Friends” are able to access your location.  That’s right. you can actually choose not to share your location with all of your Foursquare Friends.  My initial concern was that this would make it easier for sexual predators to find their targets but Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley is actually saying “Foursquare is more tightly curated to who you want to have as your check-in friends.  Facebook is a good place for status updates and sharing photos, not to keep tabs on where people are going.”  After signing up for Foursquare and checking out the settings I do agree with Dennis Crowley.

Loopt

http://www.loopt.com

Loopt offers a suite of mobile apps that run on over 100 phones across all the major U.S. carriers.  They currently offer Loopt, Loopt Star, Loopt Pulse for the iPad, and Loopt Mix.

Loopt is a location based social networking service (Loopt calls it Mobile Social-Mapping) that allows you to use the location of your mobile device to discover the best places and events around you or your friends.  It also shows you where your friends are (creepy), what they are doing (creepier), and much more (creepiest).  Some people might think this is weird because people can see where you are and what you are doing but it can be a very cool app.  You don’t have to share this information with everyone although I’m sure this is hackable…there’s gotta be a geek in his mom’s basement somewhere in middle America that has figured out how to track everyone on Loopt and Foursquare…but…what are you gonna do?  Anyways…the feature I love is sharing directions and other information on events and places from Citysearch, Metromix, Zagat, and other similar sites.  You can also save money with coupons from retailers, which I love as well!

Loopt Star, which is new as of June 2010 (were talking super fresh apps here), is a free mobile rewards game.  With this rewards game you can actually get real stuff like free music and special offers.

Loopt Pulse for the iPad (specially designed just for the iPad…isn’t that special) is kind of like Loopt on steroids.  You can check out nearby places and local events in Photo and Map views, which I thought was pretty cool even though you can do this on google maps without it.

Loopt Mix introduces you to people nearby (could be creepy) that have similar interests as you.  For example, if you were new to Miami and there was a concert you wanted to attend, you could simply create a profile on Loopt Mix and find someone nearby to go to the concert with you.

In conclusion, both Foursquare and Loopt are very neat location based social networking services that can be very useful to some yet creepy to others.  If you don’t give a damn about who sees where you are going all day long then get Foursquare or Loopt on your iPhone and have it update to your Facebook.  It is a little weird when you are on Facebook and you can see every place your friend John Smith (just an example name) visits on a daily basis…a little “Big Brother Core” if you ask me but…to each his own!