Posts tagged group messaging
How Can We Use Group Messaging in The Real World? CNET’s Caroline McCarthy asks what’s next for group messaging in a post this morning, because, as she says, “let’s face it, SXSW is not the real world.”
I’ve been considering possible use cases for the past week, both commercial and personal, and I don’t see myself every wanting to group text with people I don’t know.
Would it be great to have a group text with my roommates or carpool group? Yes. Could we use it in the newsroom to connect field reporters with editors in the field? It could work.
Would I ever want to have a book talk via SMS? Absolutely not.
-LB
This Year’s Twitter/Foursquare? Group Messaging. Within 24 hours of touching down in Austin for SXSW, I’d already been added to three group messages. Syracuse University alums’, lady bloggers from New York, and a circle of friends from the NY tech scene. When I’ve reached out to friends, instead of someone saying that they’ll follow my tweets, or reminding me to check in on Foursquare, they just say “Text the group and let everyone know where you are.” Groupme, the service I’ve been using, is beyond easy — one person adds a group of friends to the Groupme, and then all members can text and read messages from a single phone number.
It might read:
Lauren: I’m at Emo’s and it’s AWESOME.
Beth: I’ll be there in 15, is there a line?
John: No, I just walked in!
Lauren: John, meet me on the back patio!
Groupme is by no means the only service out there, this Techcrunch post will run you through the other popular services Fast Society, Beluga and Yobongo. None of this is to say that people aren’t using Twitter or Foursquare to track down the biggest party of the night — what group messaging does is allow people to keep track of and privately communicate with a specific group of people. My friend Beth may not want to tell the world that the party she’s at is lame, but thats not a problem for our circle of ten friends.
-LB
