Facebook Checks-In On Loopt

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/24/facebook-loopt-talks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

by jasonlbaptiste • 16 years ago

24 15 16 years ago

techcrunch.com

jseifer• 16 years ago

"There is no indication that Facebook has made an actual offer to buy Loopt at this time, and in fact we don’t even have direct information that negotiations are taking place. But it’s clear that Facebook is at least considering acquiring Loopt, and/or others in this space."

You just have to love the writing on TC.

loganfrederick2• 16 years ago

I know it's easy to comment on how oddly (or poorly) written some TC articles can be, but this is taken out of context.

Right before the quote you posted, TechCrunch says, "Facebook has been doing background checks, known as due diligence...."

There aren't too many reasons for one private company to do due diligence on another private company besides acquiring it. When reading the actual article, the logical leap makes more sense than taking that quote out of context.

marcus• 16 years ago

"There aren't too many reasons for one private company to do due diligence on another private company besides acquiring it"

That is an often repeated but mistaken myth.

There aren't many reasons for a company to agree going through a due-diligence except for the chance to being bought, unfortunately some companies use due-diligence as a research tool into markets they think they might be interested in with no real intention of actually purchasing the inspected company, sometimes even developing a competing product at the SAME time.

seldo2• 16 years ago

As the blog post points out, Facebook has one of the most popular iPhone apps in the world (and Blackberry, and Android) but despite that big mobile user base hasn't made a play in the geo space, so this makes sense on that front.

However, one of Loopt's biggest use-cases is location-based dating. I think trying to get into the dating business would be a terrible mistake for Facebook.

jey• 16 years ago

> However, one of Loopt's biggest use-cases is location-based dating.

How so? They're not doing anything in that direction as far as I know. Is this just your suggestion that it would be a good use case for them to pursue?

> I think trying to get into the dating business would be a terrible mistake for Facebook.

Why? Facebook could do it a lot better than any of the existing dating-only sites with the info they have on everyone's social graph and their high penetration. They probably wouldn't want to come out and blatantly add a "dating" feature, but instead just add features that "happen" to facilitate dating use-cases. A lot more people would be willing to do internet dating if it wasn't explicitly "internet dating", but instead just happened as an organic process on a site they were already a part of for other reasons.

marshally2• 16 years ago

Facebook is already a daters delight. It has facilitated more hookups to date than Match.com.

You can browse your social graph, find out who is single, check out their pics, their profiles, and the minutia of what they ate for breakfast last Tuesday. If you like what you see, you can send them all manner of messages through platform features (would you like to "poke" Jennifer? "Poke"? Really?). And if you wind up in a relationship with this person, you both can mark that on your profiles (and later, so can you mark your Bukowskian divorce).

Facebook Connect, Farmville, and the fact that your Grandmother signed up for an account has not changed the fact that Facebook's roots are in helping college kids hook up for date.

seldo2• 16 years ago

> How so? They're not doing anything in that direction as far as I know.

http://www.looptmix.com/

Perhaps my impression is skewed coming from gayworld, but I thought this is all anybody used them for.

PanMan• 16 years ago

I think dating is one of the biggest use-cases for social networks. Nobody is on them just to date, but since everybody is on them, they are used for dating a LOT.

axod• 16 years ago

>> "Jupiter Research recently stated that location based services could generate nearly $13 billion in revenue by 2014."

Location based! It's gonna be big I tell ya! What BS. Where do they pluck these numbers from?

marshally2• 16 years ago

"Well, there's a billion people in China. If I can just gain 1% of that market, and sell one soda per year to each of them ..."

herdrick2• 16 years ago

I don't like to see this kind of story reported. If Facebook doesn't now buy Loopt it will look like something bad came up in due diligence, making Loopt less attractive to other potential acquirers, at least for a while. Further, Facebook will be tempted to use that fact for leverage.

But maybe reporting on it makes no difference because enough people in the industry would know about it anyway. I don't know.

gyardley• 16 years ago

Heh, when I read the story I assumed that MG's source was an executive at Loopt.

If Facebook is truly doing due diligence on Loopt, MG's article will get the attention of others who may come and take a look and create a competitive bidding environment. Anonymously slipping TechCrunch a tidbit is the easiest way to do this without being caught shopping the company and irritating Facebook.

herdrick2• 16 years ago

Very good point. Perhaps we'll know someday what happened.

Facebook Checks-In On Loopt

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