Hey, I Know Where U R

Loopt lets you use a cell phone to share locations.

Moms and dads, if you want your kids to get a degree, think twice about Stanford. If, like Sam Altman, your matriculating computer-science major gets an idea for a new company—in Altman’s case, Loopt, a service that lets people with GPS-equipped mobile phones share their real-time locations with friends—next thing you know, your scion and his buddies will have checked out of the dorm. Instead, they’re hobnobbing with venture-capital firms (Loopt received $5 million from Net Enterprise Associates and Sequoia), forging deals to get access to subscribers at carriers like Sprint and Verizon, and snaring CBS as their first major buy for ads. Altman, who just turned 23, has now been CEO of Loopt for three years, during which the company says it has lured “hundreds of thousands” of people who let their phones beam their locations to friends, and ...