[hooande]

To be fair to loopt, the market changed between 2005 when they launched and 2009 (ish) when foursquare launched. 5 years ago people weren't nearly as comfortable with the idea of location based social networks. Loopt and the deals that they signed probably had a big hand in making the concept more familiar and paved the way for many of it's competitors. The popularity of twitter might have also had something to do with it.

This probably holds true for a lot of examples of companies that solved the wrong problem. When your competitors can evaluate your progress, it's much easier for them to position themselves according.