American wireless phone company Sprint has announced that it will offer a service that can help a user spot the locations of his or her friends through mobiles around the world.
The service that uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology will also automatically upgrade the location of a user’s friends every 15 minutes.
The updated locations will then be displayed on the subscribers’ mobile phones. It will cost a user $2.99 per month plus standard data charges, reported the online edition of science magazine Popular Science.
Sprint, one of America’s largest cell phone service providers, inked a deal to provide this service with Mountain View’s Loopt, which first introduced its service last fall on Boost Mobile, a mobile service owned by Sprint.
The service is aimed at the people between 14 to 25 years of age who most frequently use social-networking sites like MySpace. It will allow users to create groups of friends on their phone and keep track of them using a combination of text messaging, pictures and the GPS technology embedded in many new cell phones.
Sprint stressed that the service was strictly permission-based and users had the liberty to turn the friend-finder feature on or off depending on their preferences.
“The most common mobile question in the world is ‘where are you?’,” said Sam Altman, the chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Loopt.
“We’re excited that Loopt will be able to answer that question for Sprint customers who choose to participate,” said Altman.
[Submitted by Imran Asad]
