Loopt update brings new ad-hoc friends meet up features

While the press has made much of potential privacy issues with location-based apps, Loopt has unveiled a set-up designed to make it easier for users to meet up with each other.

The new Ping feature, which Loopt believes is a perfect match for its close-knit audience, will allow users to request the current location of their friends via a push notification with one touch.

Said friends can then choose to respond in a similarly succinct manner or, indeed, Pong back - the app updating their location automatically and highlighting their position on the original user's map.

Friendly gesture

Those behind Loopt believe the Ping-Pong tools, which can be accessed from the app's home grid, will allow users to meet-up with their friends in seconds, making the app an essential part of day to day social activities.

"The ability to communicate with your friends specifically about their location is really important," said Loopt CEO Sam Altman.

"Loopt friends tend to be a closer, more intimate group than most have on Facebook or Twitter - mostly people you’d hang out with regularly. This feature shows how location sharing can elevate our everyday mobile interactions."

Indeed, the new service relies on Loopt friends being just as tight as Altman suggests - although it's possible either to opt out of sending Pong replies on a case by case basis, or to switch of Ping alerts altogether.

Ping comes as part of a wider update to the app, version 3.1 also refreshing Loopt's background location settings and map set-up.