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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 S

by willz 19y ago

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.

technoguyrob 19y ago
Thanks for that summary, willz (and congrats on your first post). That really helped me see the "big deal" about Loopt. I read about it in pg's essays and visited the website, but I didn't see any extreme usefulness in an application that "shows you where your friends are." However, if it is expanded to the point of making recommendations, then I can indeed see the brilliance. It's like expanding Web 2.0 into the real world, isn't it? That's very cool. I see, now. Although I can indeed as well think of many privacy concerns with Loopt (which Sam has probably solved), I wonder if you could use it as an aid to finding stolen or lost phones? Many possibilities come to mind. This just adds to pg's thesis: startups are almost never what they start as, but what their users need them to become.
- willz 19y ago
  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.

by willz 19y ago

technoguyrob 19y ago

Thanks for that summary, willz (and congrats on your first post). That really helped me see the "big deal" about Loopt. I read about it in pg's essays and visited the website, but I didn't see any extreme usefulness in an application that "shows you where your friends are." However, if it is expanded to the point of making recommendations, then I can indeed see the brilliance. It's like expanding Web 2.0 into the real world, isn't it? That's very cool. I see, now. Although I can indeed as well think of many privacy concerns with Loopt (which Sam has probably solved), I wonder if you could use it as an aid to finding stolen or lost phones? Many possibilities come to mind. This just adds to pg's thesis: startups are almost never what they start as, but what their users need them to become.

willz 19y ago
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.