Group messaging: power of the pod
Jinfo Blog

By Joanna Ptolomey

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Two months back I was reporting on mobile personalisation being strong at the Las Vegas consumer show – you must remember the fridge that you could tweet from?

What was piquing interest around many of the reporters was the chat around a mobile app called Beluga - a group messaging service helping people stay in touch on the go.  It is an app for both iPhone and Android use.  It has been developed to compete with other products including the BlackBerry messenger platform.

Group messaging is taken one step further by Beluga with the ability to create ‘pods’ (groups) of interaction and sharing.  The product is being further enhanced by using geolocation tagging and picture sharing.   Socially it sounds more useful because we don’t always want one-to-one communication – more often than not people act in groups.

Location-based apps have been popular this last couple of years with products such as Foursquare.  However there does seem to be trend towards the group messaging product with groupme being another product I have seen touted as a good option.

To be honest I am not a fan of Foursquare as a way of spending my time, but I do appreciate the geolocation aspect.  Geolocation has a great many benefits for the information consumer and provider in practical projects.  I am involved in a health information project at the moment where geolocation is not just an added feature but is an essential component and will make the product truly valuable.

I can also see the benefits of group messaging, as opposed to the regular SMS one-to-one dynamics.  It reflects the dynamic situations in which we as people gather and socialise and want to communicate in.

Obviously the benefits have been recognised by others and that means only one thing - acquisition.  This time Facebook has acquired the talent and assets which could help them with their mobile Facebook application with improved messaging and geolocation functionality.

For the moment Beluga will continue and so will group messaging – watch this space I suppose.

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