Not sure what phones your gf and "other friend" have but my fiance, my dad, and my brother who have either android phones or a blackberry theirs is updated on constantly, only true updates however come when someone moves from their location, so it may say that it was last refreshed 10 hours ago due to the fact that they havent moved, i know windows mobile phones you had to actually open the app and iphones well yeah they only work as well when you open the app, unlike the android and blackberry phones that always have it running in the background.