How the other guys do it...

In my inaugural blog post, I'll be talking about how loopt does things...

As far as location disclosure goes, loopt gives users 3 modes of operation: all of my friends can see my location, only some of my friends can see my location, or no one can see my location. If you choose the "some friends" option, you can block individual friends from seeing your location, one by one. Whichever setting you choose, it persists until you decide to change it. The UI also makes it easy to see which mode you are in at a glance - a special icon is placed in the corner of the screen that indicates the mode.

Of course, loopt also allows you to lie about your location just as CLUSTER does, although nowhere in the UI is it referred to as "lying". In the app settings, the user can choose between automatic location updates via GPS/CellID, or they can manually set their location with a street address or by just placing a dot on the map. So, loopt allows you to lie about your location, but you're either lying to everyone or no one. Clearly there are instances where you want to lie to a certain group of people (significant other, perhaps employer, parents, maybe the person whom you told you were "staying in tonight"). But, is the group of people you want to lie to (or at least deny location information) always the same? The loopt UI assumes this to be true, as it allows for one of group of people that can see your location and another group that can't (via the "some friends" option). I don't think so - I think it's a little more complicated than that. For example, I can envision scenarios where I might want to lie to my parents and no one else, where i might want to lie to my girlfriend and no one else, or where i might want to lie to both my parents and my girlfriend. Making a UI that accommodates these sorts of scenarios without placing too huge of a burden on the user would certainly be difficult, so perhaps loopt has struck the right balance.

Also, if someone doesn't want to disclose their location, is it better to lie or just not disclose any location at all? What are the conclusions someone draws from not being able to see your location? Does it mean you're not running the application? Does it mean your hiding something from them? You'd like to have plausible deniability and be able to say that you just forgot to run the app or there was something wrong with your phone, but I think as these applicatons become more common place and more integrated with the phone, that will become less of an option and people will assume your doing something you don't want them to see.

There's a sort of analog to this with normal cell phone usage. When you're trying to avoid someone and not answer their phone call, the only option is to let it ring 4 times and go to voicemail or to leave your phone off altoghether. If it rings any less than 4 times and goes to voicemail, the person on the other end knows you clicked "ignore", and maybe they want to know why. If the phone doesn't ring at all, or you let it ring until voicemail, you could just say that you left your phone on silent or you were in a dead spot. Are there equally plausible excuses for not disclosing your location in applications like loopt or Cluster?

loopt also allows you to message one or more of your friends from within the application, but it's really nothing more than a front-end on top of SMS. That is, it's not like 3jam where replies to group messages go to whole group rather than just the message sender.

When viewing the location of your friends, either on the map or in the list view, each friend's name, latest status message, and distance from you (in miles/km) is shown. They also have a journaling feature, whereby you can log your status messages or other random items, including photos. In fact, whenever you set your status, you have the option of automatically saving the status message to your journal. Friends can then browse and leave comments on any of your journal entries.