Virgin Mobile USA launches 3jam multi-person SMS service
By Dusan Belic on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 12:42 AM PST In Announcements, Services, Virgin Mobile
Even though Virgin Mobile USA (NYSE: VM) is just an MVNO and does not have its own infrastructure, it keeps adding some very cool and innovative services to its offering. Lately they’ve partnered with 3jam to provide their users with multi-party text-messaging service. This is the first time a carrier has brought such service to allow more than two users to chat at the same time. Virgin Mobile USA’s customers can use the new service for free, although standard text messaging rates apply.
This is also a huge victory for 3jam which will now get much more users thanks to the tie up with a carrier. And in case you care, they took $4 million in funding from Norwest Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates in July this year.
[Via: TechCrunch]
3jam has been offered almost worldwide for a while now. Furthermore they are hardly the first to offer such a service, UPOC has around since 1999 or so. UPOC was originally launched in NYC but has been offered throughout the US and Canada for years. Additionally Dodgeball, offering a similar service for serveral years now as well. Both UPOC and Dodgeball offer group chat while only sending one message, 3Jam is actually the newest player on the block.