“Loopt u-Deals are for great for people who have been craving a deal at their favorite local place or somewhere they’ve wanted to try,” a Loopt representative tells WebProNews. “It’s also a strong deal alternative for the construction worker getting manicure deals or the vegetarian receiving steakhouse deals.”

Loopt says there are three basic steps:

1. Request a deal.

3. Loopt will contact the business and try to make it happen. If the business approves, you all get the deal and some u-Deals will remain open for purchase.

Anyone can purchase an approved u-Deal, the company says.

“Loopt u-Deals are truly a team effort – deal creators, their friends and family, Loopt, and local merchants all come together to make them happen,” said Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO, Loopt. “If we can continue to make local business connections simple, fun and rewarding for mobile users, we’ll start to see much stronger social ties within local communities nationwide.”

Watch our recent interview with Altman here:

Loopt is working with group-buying platform ChompOn to process the u-Deals purchases.

The U-Deals are starting in the San Francisco Bay area, and at launch, Loopt’s Android app will have u-Deals and the ability to request a deal. The functionality will also soon come to the iPhone.

Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of Loopt, “strongly believes” that no mobile service will see a bigger benefit from this aspect of the iOS update than those offering deals. He shared some thought on this with WebProNews.

Loopt says being able to surface deals in an unobtrusive (but easily accessible) way is huge, as deals that don’t interrupt but are available for you to see at all times will be much more attractive to mobile users (both for current and incoming smartphone users). Altman thinks we’ll see a lot more users opting in to deal notifications as a result.

“We’re finally reaching a place with mobile technology where we can actually bring super-relevant, limited-time deals to consumers when they’re near the deal location,” he tells us. “With mobile notifications, instant deal gratification is possible. We’ve been sending location-relevant deals/rewards through Loopt since March, and we were really excited to incorporate Groupon Now! deals into our offering more recently. Consumers love the surprise and delight of discovering a deal without having to proactively look for it. There’s a lot of potential in this.”

He’s referring to a partnership Loopt and Groupon launched last month. Here’s our interview with Altman about that:

On why the deals space will benefit more than other spaces from this iOS update, Altman says, “Everyone loves a good deal, but not everyone wants a screen-filling message when there’s a deal around. I think we’ll see more people opting in (and staying opted in) to non-intrusive alerts. More notifications sent equates to more traffic to the deal services and ultimately more people coming through the doors of local businesses.”

“We might see more levels of notification, with apps tiering out notification priority and frequency so the user can decide,” he adds, referring to the industry at large.

He says Android has “absolutely” provided a glimpse of what players can do on a wider scale, once the iOS update rolls out. “Android’s notifications are similar, we’re excited to see this kind of implementation on iPhone,” he says.

Apple calls iOS 5 “the most extensive software update ever for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.” It has over 200 new features and gives devices access to the company’s iCloud service. The notifications feature comes with a “notifications center,” which Apple has touted as one of the “key” features. It aggregates all notifications, and can be accessed by simply swiping down from the top of the screen. It also shows stocks and weather at the top of the screen, and will display a little pop up at the top to let you know about a notification while you’re watching a video or playing a game.

The partnership also incorporates Loopt’s recently launched Reward Alerts product that allows users to opt in to get timely deals in their current location. Loopt CEO Sam Altman told WebProNews that he hoped the joint effort would create a great experience for consumers and merchants, while also creating a solid revenue stream for Loopt and Groupon.

“This is something we’ve been excited about for a long time,” he said. “It’s another way that we help connect users to the places around them.”

Altman believes the partnership will specifically help local merchants as they make limited and immediate offers. For example, if a restaurant wanted to increase its lunch business, it could send out an immediate offer for 50 percent off their lunch menu. In this case, the merchant wins because it has the opportunity to monetize something that it probably would not have gotten any value from otherwise. The consumer also wins because he gains value in the good deal.

Marshall Kirkpatrick over on ReadWriteWeb suggested that this partnership could be an “aggressive move” on Loopt’s part to beat Facebook with its own deals service. When we asked Altman about this inference, he said his company wasn’t trying “to beat someone to the punch.” Instead, he said, “What we’re focused on here is really doing the right thing for users and for local businesses.”

In terms of competition, Altman could not comment on All Things D’s report regarding Foursquare and Groupon’s potential partnership. However, he indicated that it wouldn’t be surprising for the two to reach an agreement.

He also pointed out that Loopt’s partnership with Groupon is different from other offerings since it can constantly connect users to new locations and deals without its app even being opened.

“We have a particularly strong value proposition there because we have this constant location, and we can alert our users when they’re near these deals,” Altman said.

In addition, he believes that merchants are not as interested in offering deals to users who have already checked in but are more interested in pulling in new people with their deals. According to him, Loopt and Groupon together are helping merchants attract these new consumers.

At this time, the service is only available in the Chicago area, but Altman said Loopt would open it up to more places as Groupon does.

As both consumers and merchants, how important is this partnership to you?

The company has put together a little infographic looking at how its Loopt Qs service is taking off and a specific question/answer example:

The service itself was revealed on April 20 and officially launched on May 9 as a way to get “local information you actually want” while you’re on the go. “Because think about it: most people aren’t really standing on the corner looking for the best new Japanese restaurant in town…they’re sitting in a restaurant, watching the Sushi boats float by, holding the menu and scratching their head over what to order,” explained Loopt. “The reality is: in a city like San Francisco, most places are worth going to. It’s what you do when you get there – that’s the information you need.”

“That’s why we created Qs, a fun, really social way to get bite-sized insider info and share your own opinions about a local place,” the company added. “Now, with Loopt, you can uncover and share local insights about the places around you, giving you the inside scoop about what people are doing at the places nearby—right now in real time—exposing a radar of activity around you.”

It’s not off to a bad start, considering the geographic limitations it currently has, it will be interesting to see how usage expands along with geographic expansion. The Groupon partnership should help Loopt in general, which could in turn help this particular offering.

Of course the Groupon Now offering is only available in Chicago, currently, but that will be expanded in time as well.

Groupon Now announced 9 days ago for Groupon’s hometown of Chicago (actually launched today), which is also where it is currently available for Loopt users. It provides realtime offers to users on their mobile devices based on their location. This ad from Groupon sums up what the service is all about:

Loopt, a location-based service aimed at “uncovering need-to-know info about your city” launched its Reward Alerts a couple months ago.

“We built Reward Alerts into Loopt so that people could opt in to extremely targeted, time-limited deals. Loopt is the only service that can notify you of these deals based on your current location without even opening the app,” says the company says in a blog post.

Users will get once-a-day location-based Groupon Now deal alerts. They’ll also be able to use Loopt’s existing features to spread the word, plan get-togethers around the deals, etc.

While it’s only available in Chicago for the time being, Loopt plans to offer the service nationwide. Of course Groupon doesn’t even offer it nationwide yet, so there’s no telling when that will be.

The service is available for iPhone and Android users.

It’s pretty clear that we’re going to continue to see the location-based service and offers spaces merge. There’s little doubt that we will see more and more partnerships of this type. Groupon even recently acquired Pelago, the makers of the check-in app, Whrrl. You can pretty much count on Groupon competitors like Facebook and Google getting their deals/offers products integrated across various check-in apps.

The winners in the check-in app space will be the companies that can provide the most value to consumers. The deal and aggregation of not only deals, but relevant deals is going to be key moving forward. That relevancy factor is going to give both Facebook and Google their respective edges, but in different ways. Google knows your search activity (among other things) and Facebook knows your friends and your interests. Combine these factors with location, and there are some pretty powerful opportunities for advertisers.

 Reward Alerts allow brands and local businesses to offer limited-time deals to people nearby. Reward Alerts offer a “flash” deal that is redeemable in person, instead of a deal that is purchased now, but used at a later date.

The first Reward Alerts go live in March for upcoming deals featured in the Loopt application. Users  download the update, log in, turn Rewards “on” in the app’s settings, and nearby deals will be sent straight to their iPhone, iPod touch or Android phone.

The  first Reward Alerts will be available in Austin, Texas during the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive show (March 11-15). Participating brands include Fox Broadcasting, Microsoft, OkCupid, Southwest Airlines and TiVo, among others.

“Reward Alerts represent one more step in a direction we see as really important for location-based services – making mobile more simple and real-time,” said Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of Loopt.

“With Loopt, we can alert people to what’s going on around them right now, which opens up tremendous opportunities for consumers to learn about a great deal. It’s a win-win for businesses and consumers.”

CBS has been pushing the digital boundaries with their web properties and other initiatives. They sponsored ad-supported wireless Internet access in Manhattan, free for users, in 2007, for example.

Their CBS Mobile unit took another step forward, this time in the realm of advertising. Through a deal with Loopt, which bills itself as a service that turns a mobile phone into a “social compass,” CBS Mobile announced today it will roll out the first location-based mobile Web ads in the US.

CBS Mobile wants to accomplish what we expect major Internet players like Google and Microsoft wish to do: target customers as close as possible to advertisers and prompt the consumer to engage in some sweet commerce.

“If you’re hungry and we take into account your location and time of day to display an ad for a restaurant offering free appetizers during happy hour, we’ve really blurred the line between advertising and content,” Sam Altman, CEO and co-Founder of Loopt, said in a statement.

The two companies said ads would appear on CBS Mobile and Sports sites, and on Loopt properties. They also touted privacy aspects of the service, saying they will serve ads anonymously and not store location history.

Loopt will make a real impact when it can extend its location-based ad product to other popular mobile web sites. The quality of their dealmaking will make a difference, as it looks likely people will use mobile web search services from the conventional web sites they know already.