Loopt and Groupon team up for real-time local offers (in Chicago)

Users can get push notification alerts when there's a deal nearby.

US social location service Loopt has announced a partnership with daily deals firm Groupon that will bring push notification deals to the former's users. Well, those that live in Chicago anyway.

The partnership revolves around Groupon Now, a service that offers real-time deals and discounts on food, drinks and other products and services. So far it's only available in Chicago, hence the narrow geographic focus of the Loopt partnership.

"Groupon is the master of local deals, but getting alerted to them instantly from Loopt, that’s going to bring a whole new deal experience into the fold," explains the Loopt blog. "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."

This kind of feature could make the Groupon and Loopt partnership a viable contender against Facebook Places, which aims to offer similarly local deals to its users - albeit when they check in to locations, rather than via push notification.