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Group SMS for Mobile Social Networking

March 9th, 2007 (5:50am) Anne Zelenka 18 Comments

SXSW starts today in Austin, and everyone’s looking to connect. If you’re there, you might like to meet up with people you only know from online or with colleagues and friends from far away. If you’re not there, you might like to vicariously experience the fun by tracking what your favorite people are doing.

How do you find them and figure out what they’re doing? One good way is by text messaging, especially if it’s enhanced with broadcast, group, and other capabilities along the lines of a Twitter or a Dodgeball. There are a bunch of services that take you beyond simply sending a “hey there” or “where are you?” message to your best friend. They let you tell people where you are and what you’re doing, find people near you, and make plans for meeting up.

Library clips has put together an extensive list of group SMS services for mobile social networking. Here are a few of the more interesting ones:

Jyngle – one to many closed alert system, this is a true group SMS service. You can also send group voice messages.
From the webform post an SMS, upload an audio file, record a message or text to voice.
From your phone send an SMS, dial a number and record a voicemail.
Receive alerts just by SMS or voicemail…

txtGroups – create a private/public group to send an SMS to multiple from your phone…you can also send from the web, a widget or IM. It doesn’t say if people can reply, but it does give a great scenario of a teacher SMS’g students that class has been cancelled…

Swarmit – one to many system (except for replies), invite people by email or SMS, send a message from the web, email or phone to a group, people can reply to the group…the receivers can choose to receive the message as an email, IM, or SMS. All messages, replies and contacts are available on the web…

Groovr – a mobile social network where you can SMS your presence, or SMS your location (check in), locate your friends last check in, comment on a place, check in back home, create and check in to a private place.
Shout Outs are broadcasted to all of your friends who are currently checked into locations.
Widgets so people know your Groovr location from other sites, eg. blog sidebar.
Also has groups or should I say Groops

Socialight – location blogging within a social network (also mobile version), basically every blog post has to be about a location, beside your blog post is a map with a sticky note. This way you can look at the general web map, and check out the sticky notes from all users at a given location. They also have channels. (I think this is how it works). Use the mobile web version or by SMS or email (send sticky notes via your phone, SMS/email your location to find sticky notes, SMS email your location).

What do you use to keep in touch and connect when you’re mobile?

Comments (11)

  • Hi Anne,
    you forgot Plazes (www.plazes.com) ;-)
    Plazes works with every cellular, every carrier and on the Internet – worldwide.
    The SMS feature can be found over here: http://beta.plazes.com/locate/sms.php
    Plazes is also present @ SXSW. Stefan Possert from our team is over there in Austin TX to meet with you all guys. He has some Plazes t-shirts, stickers and give aways for those who would like to plaze plazes together with him.
    His Plazes URL is the following one:
    http://beta.plazes.com/user/znrR/
    The SMS number from Plazes in the US: +1 (718) 407-9566
    (just your standard SMS fee, no additional costs)
    To join per SMS, send:
    join
    username
    password
    To invite friends, send:
    invite
    friend’s name
    friend’s phone number
    Cheers,
    Anne-Aymone

    Anne-Aymone — 8:17 AM on March 9, 2007 Reply

  • i use http://www.create-ringtone.com to create and send FREE custom ringtones, wallpaper, mp3 and video files to cell phones around the world

    steve campbel — 7:48 AM on March 12, 2007 Reply

  • Whilst services like txtgroups may be focusing on the concept of texting groups, companies like ours have been providing that facility for several years.

    Using our service, you can create any type of group and define the characteristics which are unique to that group and then use those characteristics to create subgroups. You can create a a group of students for a school and use the grades, sex etc. to form subgroups or anything you like.

    Using our service, people can join and leave a group by texting subscription commands like “JOIN” or “GO” and you can also use dynamic replacement to customise messages in any way that you like.

    The only difference is that we provide this group facility amongst many, many, other services which means it does not get as much attention. But, seriously, if anyone is interested in group then they really should visit our site and set-up a test account.

    Fahed9:18 PM on July 3, 2007 Reply

  • I recently discovered a free tool to make own unique mp3 ringtones:
    http://www.makeownringtone.com

    Borm — 6:40 AM on August 3, 2007 Reply

  • the best site to go for a group sms is peekamo. ive been telling my friends about it and their pretty much hooked. Basically free and theres no spam. you can even add friends.

    Brad12:22 PM on August 3, 2007 Reply

  • what is peekamo? is it mobile related?

    Jeff — 1:57 PM on August 13, 2007 Reply

  • Greetings from Florida! I came across your blog posting after searching for free ringtone and your post on Web Worker Daily makes an interesting read. Thanks for sharing. I will research more next Wednesday when I have the day off.

    Harriet7:13 AM on September 5, 2007 Reply

  • I dont know with all these dependences on phones best to get an anti-theft software to prevent all these information from getting float out. Can try bak2u.com, gadgettrak.com, bestmobilesoftwares.com

    Mindy — 3:51 AM on September 22, 2007 Reply

  • wow, that was great post.. thanx for sharing the same…
    Mobile Social networking

    mobi yard5:44 AM on May 15, 2008 Reply

  • i want love sms on mobile.

    tapan — 6:00 PM on June 6, 2008 Reply

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