facebook application development

Location-based social service Loopt is launching a new mobile rewards game called Loopt Star. Loopt Star will let users check in to different locales to not only compete with friends (a la Foursquare and Gowalla), but to also earn rewards from retailers and organizations. Loopt Star is basically a virtual loyalty card with a built-in social game.

Using the free iPhone app (other platforms are being evaluated, but Loopt Star will be for the iPhone only at first), users can check in at participating organizations and earn rewards, points or discounts, based on a set of factors designated by the establishments. That means that rewards and reward amounts can be altered depending on time of day, day of the week and how frequently the person has checked in in the past.

While other location-based services like Foursquare have offered discounts and loyalty rewards to users based on where they check in and how often, the focus hasn’t been specifically on earning and offering rewards. With Loopt Star, that’s the focus.

What Is Loopt Star

Loopt Star does borrow a lot of its social game elements from Foursquare — there are badges, leaderboards and the ability to become the “Boss” of a location — however, it also differs significantly from the other location-based services already available.

• Loopt Star is based entirely on Facebook Connect. Instead of having to build or import your social graph, Loopt Star simply uses Facebook. We think this is pretty brilliant because it lets users get started immediately. Users can then share their current location in real time with their Facebook friends and alert them about special Loopt Star offers via newsfeed.
• Brands can customize campaigns based on location, the number of visits, how many people are in a group, time of day or day of the week.
• Wi-Fi location technology is used to limit cheating.
• Users can view “Nearby Rewards” in the app and also get updates of rewards for places they have been before or that their friends share with them.

Loopt has already signed more than 20 sponsors and will launch with several large companies including The Gap, Universal Records, Burger King, Starbucks and Stanford University. New brands will be rolled out each week in the application.

What rewards users get depends on the brand. For instance, if you visit The Gap twice, you’ll earn a 25% discount. Meanwhile, Burger King customers in New York City who want to “have it [their] way” three times will get a free coffee or soda alongside a qualifying sandwich.

Universal Music will be giving away MP3s to users who check in at certain bars and Starbucks will offer special badges and discounts for the most frequent customers, much like it does with Foursquare and Brightkite.

Simplicity = Smart

What we like best about Loopt Star is that it’s extremely simple. The app plugs into your Facebook social graph and then makes it easy to share location info and check in to places to earn points and rewards.

In a recent editorial post about why location hasn’t gone mainstream, Leah Betancourt argued that its value to advertisers was questionable. Loopt Star isn’t designed to be its own social network; Facebook and Twitter and other services can do that better. Instead, it can be a location guide and a virtual loyalty card. The coupons and the simplicity offer the user value, while the ability to set parameters around offers and to better target existing users offers businesses and advertisers value.

When I spoke with Loopt CEO and Founder Sam Altman about the new product, he stressed that even if Facebook does get into location on its own terms, that doesn’t cannibalize what Loopt Star is doing. On the contrary, it makes the overall service even more valuable as Facebook better integrates with location. If everything is coming in from the same stream and everything is based on the same social graph, Loopt Star can offer its sponsors and users a certain experience while still tying into the core Facebook ecosystem.

We think that’s extremely shrewd. We also think that giving advertisers and business owners more options and granular control over their campaigns will lead to more creative and expansive uses. We’ve been waiting for a location-based service to eschew the pretense of being a social network and instead embrace the advertising opportunities

A Competitive Space

Loopt was at the forefront of the location-based space, but despite having a diverse suite of mobile apps and support for lots of platforms, the service has taken a backseat as social gaming services Gowalla and Foursquare have moved to center stage.

With Loopt Star, Loopt is getting into the social gaming space but with a very clear purpose. From the offset, Loopt Star wants to offer value to users and offer value to advertisers. The value for advertisers is crucial because the companies that will end up leading this space are those that are most able to sell a cost-per-visit strategy to business owners and retailers.

To be sure, Foursquare and Gowalla have crazy momentum right now, with Foursquare reporting nearly 1 million checkins a day. However, this is a space that has yet to truly explode and there are still plenty of opportunities for other companies and services to get a shot at claiming some of this virtual (and physical) space.

By using Facebook as the basis for the Loopt Star social graph, we think that Loopt is on the right track to building a service that users will actively use. Now it will just be up to the company to secure the sponsorships and partnerships to ensure that the rewards are valuable.

What do you think of the idea behind Loopt Star? Let us know!

Tags: facebook, foursquare, geolocation, iphone apps, loopt, loopt star, social gaming

Real-time comment and reaction platform Echo announced its next group of major partnerships today. These new clients — which include The Washington Post, Time, Forbes, Sports Illustrated and Slate — are part of the company’s effort to reposition itself as communications platform for large enterprises.

We talked with Echo’s CEO Khris Loux and VP of Strategy Chris Saad about the new partnerships, the continuing changes in the social commenting space and how the company is differentiating itself from its competitors.

New Website to Support New Focus

When Echo began its rebranding efforts last year, we noted that it was a much-needed, if perhaps belated, move. To further its reinvention, the company launched a new website, AboutEcho.com that better emphasizes the company’s focus and intended customer base.

The new website makes this focus very clear: Echo is real-time social comments platform aimed at companies and brands that serve lots of content and need a safe, secure and reliable way to manage not just standard comments, but also plug into an expanding array of social services like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Yahoo, Google and more.

As we’ve noted before, Echo’s services are not overly unique. It competes with comments platforms like IntenseDebate and Disqus (which we use here at Mashable), not to mention tools like Facebook social plugins.

Loux and Saad told me that they don’t necessarily want to fight over being on the most websites. Instead, they want to focus on the core part of their business — serving top-tier media clients who have a real need for a social commenting platform that can be integrated with their existing systems and keep publishers in control of the data.

New Partnerships

When Mashable’s Jenn Van Grove wrote about Echo’s new strategy in December, she argued, “Echo has proven that it can offer a premium version of its product and attract more traditional, top-tier clients. That’s enough to convince us that Echo has a solid business model in mind, and has the potential to entice even more enterprise-level customers.”

To that end, Echo’s newest batch of featured customers shows that this is a strategy that the company is continuing to find success with.

Saad and Loux told me that when they talk to larger publishers, there are often concerns about how much data they are giving over to another party and how much a third-party system might end up pushing users off of their main sites. Ultimately, publishers want users to be able to share content and communicate on other platforms, but they don’t want the user to be taken to another page or portal in order to do that.

Additionally, Loux told me that many publishers have expressed some reticence about Facebook’s social plugins, noting that while many of the bigger companies are at the very least experimenting with what Facebook has to offer, they aren’t so sure they like that Facebook controls all of the user data instead of the site itself.

Using Comments to Achieve Data Portability

When I first met Chris Saad two years ago, I spoke to him about the Data Portability Project and its underlying mission to make data reusable and interoperable between sites and applications.

We’ve come a long way in two years on that front; more companies are embracing technologies like OpenID and microformats and more services offering ways to export data efficiently and easily.

However, there is still a long way to go. Ultimately, one of the long term goals of Echo is to use its platform to further the synaptic web and to further the cause of data portability. One reason that Echo is targeting larger publishers and content providers — in addition to the revenue they generate — is that data portability becomes easier to integrate across those systems.

Echo is essentially leveraging its commercial service to help further broader goals for the future of data and the web. We’re fans of making data portable and interoperable and if a commenting service is what can help further that goal, we’re on board.

Undoubtedly, Echo still faces competition from both other social commenting services and from other networks like Facebook. Still, we think that as long as Echo continues on its path of targeting top-tier customers and distinguishing itself by its service offerings, it has a chance to make a name for itself in the enterprise software space.

[img via djfoobarmatt on Flickr]

Tags: data portability, disqus, echo, intense debate, Open Graph, social comments