GroupMe was recently acquired by Microsoft/Skype for over $50 million. It’s a great sign that if you build a great app and company around it, you can still be acquired for a ton of money even if you don’t make a single dollar in revenue. The company doesn’t seem to have slowed down after its acquisition though and has announced version 3.0 which includes availability in Canada. Click through for more details.
Continue reading ‘GroupMe Goes 3.0 With New Features and Support for Canada’
Tag: sxswPage 2 of 3
UPDATE: GroupMe will be releasing this latest build, which includes a few new updates, to the public from their website. The link is live and you can go to it now: bit.ly/grpme2030. You can read about it on their blog too.
Recently GroupMe, the popular group messaging app, was updated to version 2.0. For those who don’t know, GroupMe, one of the popular SxSW-launched apps, allows you to start a group, add your friends, and get a free phone number for it. Text the number and everyone gets your message, like a text chat room. Call it and you’re all instantly on a conference call. New features include:
- In-app chat. Send messages over your data connection, entirely within the app. Text as much as you want without hitting your SMS balance.
- Push notifications. You will get messages as soon as GroupMe receives them. BlackBerry notifications appear in your inbox when you receive new messages.
- Photo-sharing. Take and share photos with your groups right within the app.
- An improved, fresh user interface.
Check out “The Official Live & Rockin’ Venue” on 4SQ
We’ve written a few times here on BlackBerryCool about Indonesia because the country is fascinating from a web and mobile uptake perspective. Recently, RIM helped made Foursquare history in Indonesia, a country known for its intense badge collecting, during a BlackBerry sponsored concert in Jakarta. With a record 31548 checkins and 19216 people, “The Official Live & Rockin’ Venue” was likely 100% powered by BlackBerry (still need confirmation). This means that a single, one day Indonesian event registered around 20% of the total checkins registered at the Austin Convention Center which hosts SXSW, where Foursquare was debuted.
I’ve reached out to Foursquare for comment and we’ll update with anything they may provide.
GroupMe has offered 50 BlackBerryCool readers the opportunity to get in on the 2.0 beta build for BlackBerry. In this latest version of GroupMe, the app features in-app chat, which will allow users to send messages over their data connection, entirely within the app and will use push notifications. Also, the new app has a cleaner UI, and GroupMe made improvements to overall performance.
Head over to the GroupMe blog and use the passcode “bbcool” (sans quotes) to register for the 2.0 beta. Remember, GroupMe is only available for US residents right now.
Also, here’s a little tip for those in the beta: choose “Push” mode for background notifications, or “SMS” mode to use less battery life.
Whatser – New Design from Whatser on Vimeo.
Whatser is a cool company that was at SXSW representing their location based service that lets you collect your favorite local spots and share them with your friends. The app is available across all three platforms: iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and it’s a fun way for local scene mavens to share the coolest spots in town with friends.
One of the more useful aspects of Whatser is discovering great new places from people you know in cities that you don’t live in. For example, I may live in Ottawa and have a friend in New York City whose opinion I value and thus can check his Whatser account for a list of places that would be great to visit. A downside of the service is that like any location startup, it’s generally big cities that gain first while smaller cities that may not have as many early tech adopters, will not get as much value out of the service.
Continue reading ‘Collect Your Favorite Spots and Share Them With Whatser’
Alexia Tsotsis interviewing an iPad 2 owner. At one point he said “I’m so excited I can’t talk.” I think that perfectly sums up Apple fans.
While SXSWi was mostly about apps and software, there was still some buzz about tablets. The three big players were there showing off their tablets: Android had the Motorola XOOM, Apple had their iPad 2 and RIM was present with the PlayBook. All three players had different strategies at the show and some were by far more effective than others.
Continue reading ‘Tablets at SXSWi: How the Big Three Were Positioning Themselves’
