gawker - The new iPhone will let you broadcast your location to people through a program called Loopt. And because this phone is now just 200 bucks, it’ll finally become an industry standard instead of a fringe geek toy. So get ready for the biggest annoying shift in your social life since Facebook.

The iPhone is now a reasonably affordable phone with a growing user base. It’s as cheap as an iPod was when that blew up. There’s Apple’s desire to change customer behavior, pushing technological advantages to the public that previously would only attract tech geeks. The iPhone makes people behave differently: They’re more apt to pull up web pages (iPhone users download five times the data of normal AT&T users), they treat texts like IM chats, and now they’ll assume everyone knows where everyone is.

So what does Loopt do? Say where you are, what you’re doing, maybe send a photo. It’s a lot of the stuff other sites already do, with the added benefit of pinning all the activity to a place. The company is pitching it as a way to know where your friends are, as often as possible. It will become normal to know, at a glance, where the people you know are. Here’s their demo from this morning:

And eventually, if you’re caught going out for a drink without inviting all your friends, some lonely acquaintance of yours is going to bug you about why they weren’t part of the group. Thanks a lot Apple.