New! Brightkite Group Text

March 11th, 2010

The Past : Remember when you sent out that text to a few friends to go to a show and then the responses trickled in one at a time and you found yourself coordinating when and who could meet where and then what to do to… all while you were trying to get your laundry done, go to the bank, and walk the dog beforehand?

The Present. .. from your friends at Brightkite: Now you can organize plans with several friends at the same time without being left to coordinate back and forth for them. And you can do it anywhere in the Universe, except a lot of places, but if you are seeing this – you have the power!

How does Group Text work?

We’ve revamped our direct messaging infrastructure to allow for multi-friend conversations and the ability to “reply-to-all’, similar to email. Now your friends, depending on their settings, will receive your messages via text, push-notification, mobile web, or web. When anyone in the group replies, everyone in the conversation will get the message….similar to a giant group hug.

You can leave and create groups on the fly (up to 25 people) making it easy to ping them about a meet up, introduce people to each other or just carry on a group conversation.

The best part is it’s free, so those of you running short on your monthly text messages, iPhone and iPod Touch owners, or mobile web users can save on unlimited texts to individuals or groups.

Chat with anyone

Group Text works with anyone. You can invite anyone from your phone address book, your Brightkite friends or just add a mobile phone number. You and your friends can use Group Text anywhere in the world. Your friends don’t need to join Brightkite to take part in your conversations – they just reply to the message and jump right in.

Send Photos and Locations

Here’s something else really useful: Group Text also allows you to send photos and locations to the group. You can send your location and attach a photo for each message. Now your friends don’t have to constantly ask, “Where are you?” or “What do you look like?”.

Use it on the Web

Create groups, send messages, photos and locations from any browser. The web also holds a complete history of all your messages, so you can cringe at all that nonsense you said last night.

Get it on the iPhone

We’ve created a Group Text optimized version of the Brightkite app, its been submitted and is in Apple’s hands now. The next release of the standard Brightkite app will have the Group Text features as well.

Use it via Text Messaging

We’ve worked with most of the carriers in the US to get these neat little things called ‘shortcode extentions’. This adds three extra numbers to our 41414 shortcode, which allows you to run up to 100 threaded conversations using text messaging. At the moment this is only available to our US customers. Give it a shot.

That’s it – take Group Text for a spin and tell us what you think.

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Posted by Brady Becker at 5:38 PM in Product

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@chartier

345 weeks ago

Looks really hot guys, great idea. I'm jazzed to try it on my iPhone soon.

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1 reply · active 345 weeks ago

@digiSal

345 weeks ago

no Android update? :(

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SXSW Text!! Group Text from Brightkite, Oh Yes. | ploked.com

[...] for you high-in-social-demand types, scratch the above time-consuming malarkey. With the new Brightkite Group Text, you can hit all your loyal buddies at once and start a big old text-versation – including [...]

click.logg | Brightkite arriva a 2 milioni di utenti e lancia i messaggi di gruppo

[...] TechCrunch, Brightkite Blog, [...]

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[...] BrightKite: Uno de los primeros sitios en incursionar en la geolocalización. Funciona con casi todos los sistemas operativos de celulares. Se puede integrar con Twitter.Más sobre el servicio aquí. [...]

Brightkite’s GroupText Is A Text Messaging Party Line – jkOnTheRun

[...] Brightkite’s GroupText Is A Text Messaging Party Line By Kevin C. Tofel Mar. 19, 2010, 3:00pm CDT No Comments 0 When I think about the lowest common denominator of mobile communications, text messaging follows close behind voice. Obviously, every phone offers voice capability by definition, but texts are nearly as ubiquitous. Email is catching up as consumers leave basic feature phones for smartphones — and many feature phones offer either a native or add-on email solution. But text messaging capability is still farther along in terms of reach across handsets. Brightkite, a location-based social network service knows that, which explains the company’s new GroupText feature. [...]

@caioiglesias

344 weeks ago

android?

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jrk

344 weeks ago

Guys, this is a great idea, but you built the binary as 3.1.3-only. 3.1.3 adds no new APIs or bug fixes, it just breaks all jailbreaks. Please, post a new binary that's compatible back to at least 3.1.2 (if not earlier).

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Xylenz

343 weeks ago

No love for WebOS?

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jax

342 weeks ago

and the rest of the world soldiers on without texts. There are quite a lot of us out here who are neither US based nor IPhone users you know. And getting SMS notifications turned on again was a priority a long time ago :(

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Jared Wilbanks

342 weeks ago

Agree with jrk. I'm on 3.1.2 and don't have any need to upgrade to 3.1.3 since I was never experiencing any battery life problems with my unlocked iPhone. Please make this available for 3.1.2. Thanks!

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Kate Foy

342 weeks ago

Got all excited about this until I saw it was US-only! Brightkite, what about indicating up front that this is not a geographically-universal app for text messaging. Your indication that it works 'world-wide' is a misnomer.

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Robin Mitra

342 weeks ago

@Kate Foy

Totally agreed!

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Brightkite utmanar med nya tjänster | The Jennie

[...] Brightkite Group Text – ”Free, Unlimited, Group Text Messaging from your iPhone or iPod Touch. The ‘Reply All’ has finally arrived in the world of texting”. Send a message, location or pic to a group of friends and when the replies come in – everyone gets them!”. Okej, tjänsten är inte unik, och jag är knappast någon sms-junkie (med en iPhone på fickan har behovet liksom minskat), men gillar ändå idén och tycker det är intressant att se hur Brightkite (för att inte drunkna i den konkurrens av liknande tjänster som de ganska säkert själva varit med att ge upphov till…) breddar sitt produktutbud. Är du intresserad, läs mer om Brightkites grupptjänst här. [...]

jardenberg kommenterar – 2010-04-03 | jardenberg unedited

[...] Brightkite Blog » New! Brightkite Group Text [...]

schilke

342 weeks ago

@Kate Foy

ditto!

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Brightkite launches free group text service and starts Check.in beta

[...] all we have to say here is that you should head over to the site and sign up for beta invitation. Brightkite Group Text is all-new, though, and it looks awesome. You know how email has a "reply all" feature? This is [...]

Guillegui

341 weeks ago

Very interesting application indeed! Although it doesn't mention anything about the cost of the service. Will my mobile operator charge me for the SMS? Or it uses my data connection to send the messages, like IM? Thanks!

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Brightkite Group Text Delivers 20 Million Messages Per Month, Launches In Canada | Venture Capital & Angel Investors Lists News and Jobs

[...] those who are not familiar with the service: Group Text is a free location-based service that works through text messaging, the web, mobile web, and iPhone and iPod touch devices. The [...]

Brightkite Group Text Delivers 20 Million Messages Per Month, Launches In Canada | Tecnologia

[...] those who are not familiar with the service: Group Text is a free location-based service that works through text messaging, the web, mobile web, and iPhone and iPod touch devices. The [...]

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[...] into Canada. As TechCrunch notes:For those who are not familiar with the service: Group Text is a free location-based service that works through text messaging, the web, mobile web, and iPhone and iPod touch devices.The [...]

Inevitablefate

339 weeks ago

Does it work in the philippines? The group text message.coz maybe you updated it...

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1 reply · active 292 weeks ago

cheng

337 weeks ago

wtf men? why say worldwide if it is not worldwide?

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Brightkite Blog » Latest Brightkite Blackberry app Released, featuring Group Text

[...] the Brightkite app for Blackberry has just released a major 2.0 upgrade featuring Group Text and a slug of other cool features. Blackberry users now join those using Group Text on iPhone, iPod [...]