Group messaging was not as useful as we thought it would be this year at SXSW. Whether you were using Beluga, GroupMe, Kik, Yobongo or Fast Society or others, everyone had high hopes for a breakout group messaging app, simply because we spoiled tech brats are already bored with the ones we already have.

I know it’s old school, but towards the tail end of the conference simple SMS won out (for me at least). SXSW isn’t about hanging out with the same groups of people all the time, but rather about having variety of exclusive options. In practice group messaging is kind of weak on the exclusivity thing, because you’re almost always roped into groups with at least one person you don’t like, which prevents you from sharing potentially useful information regarding your whereabouts.

While my co-worker MG doesn’t seem to think there is any clear SXSW winner, if you had to pick a frontrunner among the group messaging apps, in my opinion, it would be good ole’ GroupMe, if only because it seemed like the app most people used (unless you count Instagram as a group messaging app).

The data above (provided above by the folks at Pop Agency) agrees with me, in infographic form — tracking how much each app was mentioned on Twitter and sentiment analysis from March 11th through March 15th. The graphic provides a helpful features checklist for the contenders along with proclaiming the SXSW group messaging Winner, Second Place and Best In Show.

And yes, this graphic does beg the question, “If we’re judging the winners by Twitter mentions, doesn’t that mean Twitter actually won?” Well, welcome to tech.

Crunchbase

• GROUPME

Company: GroupMe

Website: groupme.com

Launch Date: May 2010

Funding: $11.5M

GroupMe is a group messaging service that lets you stay in touch with groups of people via mobile phones and the web. The service allows you to effortlessly group text with the people in your life that are important to you. It’s totally free and works on every phone. GroupMe is based in New York and was founded in May 2010 at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. In August 2011, GroupMe was acquired by Skype, which was subsequently acquired by Microsoft...

Learn more