Groupme Takes SMS Texting To The Next Level, Let’s You Create Private SMS Groups
Imagine this – your entire class is going for a summer holiday project at different locations and everyone wants to stay in touch with each other, until they meet again in the classroom. Group members want to share messages, photos, web links and files with remaining members of the group in the simplest possible way.
There are quite a good number of options open.
First ones are private in house groups like Google groups or Yammer which allow users to create a private network with selected group of people. Works simple – add the email address of each member to your Group and you will be given a “group email address”.
All the members can send emails to the “Groups email address” to start a discussion, share photos, links, videos and reply to some or all of the conversations they are interested in.
But there are two problems with this approach.
Email is old School And Users Need Something Which Should Work Without Internet
First off, Email or Facebook is definitely not a convenient place for group discussions where multiple people are participating in a conversation. Users often get distracted, lose the earlier messages with time and they don’t produce an instant and engaging user experience
Further, neither Email or Facebook will work when there is no internet connection at hand. Consider you are on a hiking project on some mountain and your mobile internet service provider is out of access. How do you create an online group which works with and without the Internet ?
GroupMe: Group Texting Made Easy
Groupme lets users send group SMS to multiple people and contacts, with or without an internet connection. Sign up for a free account, enter your mobile number and create your first group. Next, you can either invite other members by entering their phone numbers or send them an invitation via Facebook or Twitter.
Groupme also offers an app for Android, iPhone and Blackberry so those of you who have a smartphone can use the Groupme app for Free.
Once your group has been created, you will be given a private number where texting an SMS message would post your message to the entire group. All the members of the group will be able to read your message and reply in the proper order, as shown in the above screenshot.
If your mobile is connected to the internet, the message will be routed via your email address. If your mobile has no active internet connection, Group me will send the message as a text SMS to the group’s number.
It works both ways !
Group Conference Calls : Let Multiple People Engage In a Voice Call
There is more – dial the group’s number and the phones of all the members will start ringing. All the members can talk and listen to each other during the group voice call – which is a really effective and crazy idea.
While we have already seen Skype’s group video calling feature, Groupme is ideally suited for small sized groups who want to talk with each other when there is no internet connection available. Considering the rapid progress of internet culture – it’s no wonder users need fast and instantaneous service which works beyond plain text.
Another advantage of using Groupme is that users will save money on multiple SMS messages, sent to a whole bunch of contacts. GroupMe charges the same SMS rates so there is no economical factor in the middle.
Other features includes sharing your location with multiple friends and locating all the group members in a Google Map, GroupMe is certainly a good prospect for small to medium sized teams who want to stay in touch with each other all day long.
Don’t like a Group ? You always have the mute button which will ignore future messages from that specific group
Even in the internet age, the company wants to emphasis on SMS text, because those who don’t have a smartphone can also participate in the group discussion and keep in touch with people important in their life.
At this moment, GroupMe works with US numbers only, while support for more countries is a work in progress. Thanks Emily
