Loopt has introduced a new feature that is both useful and possibly extremely viral. The social mapping company which lets you keep track of where your friends are physically located has added the ability to automatically attach your current address to text messages and IMs. Further, they’ve integrated with your phone’s address book and AIM buddy list to provide access to all of your contacts from within Loopt.
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]This means that if I’m a Loopt user and send a message on AIM to a friend, the service will attach “24 Main St., Stasburg, VA,” and provide the recipient with the ability to map the location. Thus, in addition to being able to share my location with Loopt users, contacting someone outside of the network will provide them with both useful information (where I’m at) and a big viral boost for Loopt by way of the clickable map. In essence, you can now broadcast your location and what you’re doing to your whole social network (even if they’re not on Loopt) and let them easily find you.
Loopt’s new features add to the company’s existing mobile social mapping and blogging tools. The one thing still missing is wider carrier support; currently only Sprint Nextel and Boost customers can use the mobile features.