As more cell phone users turn to smart phones, the new set of messaging software allows users to bypass text messages offered by carriers, notes the Washington Post.
GroupMe and Beluga, bought by Facebook earlier this week, are among several free group messaging services that allows users to send texts to contact lists, Twitter followers and Facebook friends through a smartphone application. TextPlus lets groups text each other for free, search for people and send photos. Fast Society also allows users to customize groups for messages and provides conference calls.
ReadWriteWeb explains how Beluga works:
You create a “pod” (Beluga’s name for a group) of people and each time one of you sends a message, everyone else gets it.
It’s a bunch of custom-created group chat rooms. In these “pods”, you can not only share text but also pictures and locations.
A location map is centered around your friends’ locations.
Texting uses control channels, to determine where your phone is, for call setup, and connecting your call. Most of the time the channel is unused.
It costs a wireless carrier close to nothing to send and receive text — but carriers charge about $10 a month for 500 to 1,000 texts.
Carriers charge around $1000 per megabyte. Because they can get it. It’s pure profit.
Fully 72% of all teens – or 88% of teen cell phone users — are text-messagers, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Cell-phone texting has become the preferred channel of basic communication between teens and their friends, with cell calling is a close second. Some 75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones.
Carriers will likely respond to free texting services by strapping texting plans to data packages, analysts say. The Wireless Association said U.S. text messages rose to 1.8 billion June 2010 from 1.3 billion the year earlier.
Short Message Service (SMS) is the text communication service component of phone, web or mobile devices. SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application in the world, with 2.4 billion active users, or 74% of all mobile phone subscribers.
