

The Loopt debacle - prakash
http://tastyblogsnack.com/2008/07/14/the-loopt-debacle/

======
andrewf
I'm in Australia, and here, mobile charges for calls and SMS fall solely on
the caller/sender. The US convention, where the person who is charged for an
action is not the person who decided to take the action, has always seemed
slightly insane.

I've heard that the rationale for receiver pays in the US is: the receiver is
the person who decided to carry a mobile rather than use a landline, and
therefore should bear the cost. This makes some sense. But I prefer the
Australian system, where the caller can distinguish mobile numbers from
landline numbers, just like calling long distance.

~~~
jonknee
It's even better than that, both the sender and receiver pay. So if two iPhone
users send a message to each other they either both get billed $.20 or both
get 1 message deducted from their bucket for the payment period (unless there
is an unlimited messaging plan). Up to $.40 to shuffle 160 characters around
your own network is quite a haul.

------
boucher
I'm completely underwhelmed by all the iPhone Loopt bashing. A slew of people
have reported accidentally spamming their friends, but nobody has been able to
describe what happened.

When I used the Loopt iPhone app, it was pretty obvious what was going on to
me. You have to actually tap on the names of people whom you want to invite.
Now, if there is some bug that's causing invites to be sent to more than the
individuals you tap, that should be addressed, but its probably nothing more
than a bug.

Merlin Mann hasn't even tried the Loopt app, but has no problem arguing about
its supposed privacy violations. If anyone has more information, or can
actually describe the problem people are supposedly having, I'd be interested
to hear it.

~~~
icey
I can tell you that until there are zero reports of these sorts of problems,
there is absolutely no way I can even try this application out. I'm glad that
people are piling on about it, because I have a big fat phone book full of
people that I only call after I can prepare for 30 minutes before hand, and
the thought of even accidentally sending them a text like this gives me the
chills.

Like, if I'm plumbing my contact list to try to get a one in a million favor
type of contacts. It would be disastrous to spam these contacts with my phone
number and an invitation to something stupid like Loopt. What a great way for
me to tell these guys "hey, look at me! I'm some douche with an iPhone, here
to spam you! Please, never let me call in a favor again!"

I already catch enough hell for using an iPhone instead of a Blackberry like
most of corporate america and the military sector.

~~~
KirinDave
There is pretty much no chance of accidentally sending your contacts SMS so
long as you don't go clicking willy-nilly. You have to explicitly click
someone's name and odds are your colleagues aren't on a supported network
anyways.

So really, this is all FUD from the trailing edge of the mac world.

And I know the kind of social pressure you're describing, I worked with LMCO
for quite awhile, so I don't meant to sound dismissive of your concern. But
really, Loopt, Whrrl and Zintin don't send SMSs to people without asking your
first. And it sounds like you can safely pass on them anyways, because you're
probably not in the target demographic for these products.

~~~
jfornear
Example: I tried to invite a friend and it didn't even work. She was sitting
right next to me.

------
Tichy
Hm, J2ME had it's problems, but at least there always was a popup asking the
user for permission before a costly network operation was allowed.

~~~
axod
"Costly network operation"? I guess you don't live in the UK or similar. (Data
is free here (EDGE or free wifi)). Do you have to pay for _incomming_ calls
and SMS as well? If so that's just ridiculous.

edit: If it is sending out SMS it would make sense for it to ask you first
definitely.

~~~
jonknee
I believe the messages sent were from Loopt's shortcode so it wouldn't
technically cost _you_ money, but it would cost whoever received the message.
But in general you shouldn't send a message to everyone in the phonebook by
default. Especially without a confirmation page. You potentially just shared
your location with bunches of people you don't want to know your location
(exes, bosses, clients, etc).

This is the kind of thing that could easily get their shortcode revoked which
is why they reacted so swiftly.

~~~
boucher
It DOESN'T send a message to everyone in the phonebook. It only sends to
people you _select_.

------
geuis
I tried the Loopt app the first day of the iphone 2.0 launch. I promptly
uninstalled it.

Despite the hype that certain bloggers have ascribed it (ahem.. Techcrunch), I
found the actual implementation to be poor. The interface is lacking. The
integrated business search is potentially interesting, but there are other
apps that do the same thing but better.

The bottom line is that I don't want to join another social network. I was
hoping to just turn on the app and find a bunch of other people in the
city(San Francisco) to see what hot areas were going on. I can't even do that
without inviting a bunch of other people to join Loopt also.

Boo. Fail.

