People born after 1981 have lower privacy standards, Loopt CEO says

People born after 1981 are likely to have different standards for online privacy than those born earlier, according to the chief executive of Loopt, a geolocation app. 

“The magic age is people born after 1981," said Sam Altman in a New York Times article. “That’s the cut-off for us where we see a big change in privacy settings and user acceptance.”

The disparity is salient when it comes to location-based services such as those offered by Loopt, which allow users to tell their friends where they are. Those services are popular among young people but have failed to penetrate the a large swath of the population, the NYT (http://nyti.ms/aHtnuf) reports. 

Only 4 percent of Americans have tried geolocation apps. Only 1 percent use them weekly, according to Forrester Research. 

So far, adoption is largely confined to young people living in cities. Melissa Parrish, an interactive marketing analyst at Forrester, tells the NYT, “Clearly the question is whether it has reached the mainstream, and it looks like the answer is no.”

Facebook launched a location service called Places this month, which stands to increase the adoption of geolocation services.

"If Places catches on with Facebook’s 500 million users, many think it could bring location-sharing to the masses," the NYT said.