Group Text Messaging: A Trojan Horse for the Next Big Social Network
Group text messaging has become one of the most buzzed about topics in the tech community because it’s easy, useful, fun, and millions of people are signing up. However, there’s more to group messaging than just texting amongst multiple friends. The convergence of mobile data collected by our smartphones and the immediacy of text messaging presents an enormous opportunity. Accordingly, VCs are pouring in millions of dollars betting that group text messaging is a Trojan horse for the next big social networking platform.
Facebook and Twitter have made great progress towards creating a world where sharing the details of our lives with friends and the public is normal and expected. However, it is clear some information is more private in nature, and we desire a way to selectively distribute that information to specific groups of people. A social networking platform that embraces “selective privacy” must emerge and provide us a simple and intuitive way to form groups (i.e. family, work colleagues, closest friends, etc) within our broader social networks.
Group text messaging services (“GTMS”) like GroupMe, TextPlus (GOGII), Beluga (Facebook), Disco (Google), Fast Society, Mogwee (Ning), BrightKite, and Kik all allow you to send texts for free*and some have already begun to provide functionality that allows you to share your location and photos. The ubiquity of text messaging (~75% of U.S. cell phone users text) means the potential reach of GTMS’s is enormous, and the incredible growth in we’ve witnessed proves people want to text with groups. If it hasn’t already, I would soon expect the market penetration of GTMS’s to surpass location-based check-in services. As GTMS’s grow into full-fledged platforms, their impact will be much greater than simply improving the way we communicate on our mobile phones. By forcing us to create groups in order to facilitate text conversations, GTMS’s are teaching us an instinctive way to subdivide our social network.
Facebook appeared to backtrack on its mantra that everyone’s information should be shared publicly when they launched a new version of Groups in October 2010. But, with only 50 million groups created, the service has achieved minimal success. Facebook realizes it could become marginalized unless it improves its mobile experience and addresses the issues its users face with selective sharing. Its recent acquisition of Beluga is, presumably, a step in the right direction towards both a solution for Groups and greater relevance on mobile phones.
It is unclear if Facebook will ever be accepted by users as a platform for group sharing and mobile communication. I believe an opportunity exists for an independent GTMS platform to emerge as a dominant social network that is both mobile-centric and focused on selective privacy.
*Over data connection.
