At SXSW 2011, group messaging apps are the heat and you’ve probably heard of the Beluga and GroupMe contenders but GroupedIn is also playing in this space and its social networking integration may give it a leg up against the competition.
At its core, the GroupedIn iPhone app is a group messaging app that aims to make it easier for a group to communicate with each other. You’ll be able to quickly create groups through the iPhone app and you’ll be able to communicate with non-iPhone group members through SMS. The company promises that a GroupedIn iPhone app will be hitting Android in the not-too-distant future.
The group messaging works as you would expect it but what may set this apart is the Twitter and Facebook integration. GroupedIn notifications can be sent to users on Facebook, it will post it to their wall if they’ve allowed it and you’ll even be able to see the full conversation on that message within the app even if some Facebook users aren’t part of the group.
The GroupedIn iPhone app could use a little more polish but I like what it does and the features and functionality are there. A little bit smoother user interface would go a long way, though.
It’s going to be tough for this app to gain a lot of traction though, as this is a heavily-crowded space. We talked to the founder of GroupMe at SXSW and that company is off to a good start at owning this space.
The big whale in all of this will be Facebook, which recently purchased Beluga. I could easily seeing the social-networking giant integrate this technology into its various apps. Of course, privacy may always be a concern whenever you’re involved with Facebook and getting a ton of users to input their phone numbers may be a steep challenge at first.
Check out the GroupedIn iPhone app in a video below and let us know what you think.