Startups gearing up for the SXSW are shining up their apps and hoping to Wow the crowds of iPhone-toting hipsters by releasing major upgrades in advance of the Austin conference. Among group texting apps alone, in the past week we’ve seen new releases from GroupMe, Fast Society, Beluga, and others. Everyone’s put their best face forward and now the race is on to see which one will become the… → Read More
If you are a group texting startup worth your salt, you’ve got to have a new app ready for the upcoming SXSW conference in Austin. GroupMe, Beluga (which was just bought by Facebook), Kik, TextPlus, and offshoots like Yobongo will all be strutting their stuff. Not to be outdone, Fast Society just pushed out a completely revamped iPhone app and an Android app is coming out today as well.
I… → Read More
It’s war!
This week, I went to the unveiling of the iPad 2 and got some hands-on time with the device afterwards. Meanwhile, Jason bought a Xoom and has been extensively testing it out. The consensus? iPad 2: Good. Xoom: Bad. At least for now. I haven’t extensively played with iPad 2 yet, and Google is undoubtedly going to patch the Xoom. But still, first impressions are key.
Jason and I discuss… → Read More
Well, well, looky here. GroupMe just got a lot app-friendlier. The group texting app is pushing out a massive new update today for both the iPhone and Android that supports push notifications as the default messaging option instead of costly SMS, maps, inline photos in chats, better Foursquare integration, and contact syncing with Twitter, Facebook, and email.
Up until now, the GroupMe app was… → Read More
When a good idea comes along, often what you see are multiple startups pop up who were all working on it independently but launch around the same time. Look at Foursquare and Gowalla in geo-location apps or Instagram, PicPlz, and Path in geo-photo apps. Right now, a lot of the action seems to be in group messaging, with Groupme, Beluga, and Fast Society all vying for mobile group supremacy. … → Read More
We covered Fast Society a couple of weeks ago as a GroupMe-like multi-party texting app so addictive it caused an entire conference panel to succumb to its distractions.
Today the guys behind Fast Society have taken the concept one step further and expanded the original vision behind the app — i.e. the ability to coordinate friends at a rock concert — hooking up with New York’s revered CMJ… → Read More
It isn’t often you get to see people enthusiastically using a brand new app in the wild; At the Tahoe Tech Talk today, while on a three hour panel Q & A with angel investors Chris Sacca, Dave McClure, Travis Kalanik, Dave Morin, Kevin Rose, Ben Kaufman and Gary Vaynerchuk, I got to see this exact thing happen, as the aforementioned (except for Morin) wouldn’t stop texting and laughing onstage. → Read More
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Berlin, Germany
San Francisco
