GroupMe

How to get noticed at SXSW: 13 grilled cheeses in 60 seconds

AUSTIN, Texas--Standing out amid the army of startups clamoring for attention at South by Southwest Interactive isn't easy. That is why RecordSetter, a site designed to do just as the name implies, and GroupMe brought in competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi do battle with others at a tent giving away grilled cheeses.

Kobayashi, best known as the former champion of the Nathan Hot Dog eating contest, went at it with fury. In a minute flat, he tossed back 13 grilled cheese sandwiches, complete with 26 slices of bread filled with slices of American cheese. His strategy: he dunked each sandwich … Read more

The battle for SXSW is Highlight's to lose

Highlight, a passive location-sharing app, is poised to emerge as the big winner of South by Southwest, thanks to a wave of positive media attention. But will it be able to live up to expectations?

The SXSW music, film, and interactive-media festival is one of the most important and prominent launching pads for tech startups. The confab hosts one of the largest concentrations of techies and early adopters in the world (more than 20,000 will attend this year's festival), making it fertile ground for an app to quickly gain traction and go viral.

Don't underestimate the "… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1536: TouchPad frenzy ignites the Internet (Podcast)

HP has a winner on its hands, now that it's killed off that particular winner. The Internetorati clamor to buy discounted TouchPads, while HP's stock plummets 20 percent to a six-year low. So, Apotheker, who's right? You or the geeks? Also, Facebook finds out once again that censorship is hard, and the real reason aliens want to kill us: we'll ruin the entire galaxy if we get off this rock!

HP TouchPad fire sale

Google rolls out verified profiles for Google+, Skype buys GroupMe messaging service, and HP liquidates its stock of tablets.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Skype to buy group-messaging company GroupMe

Skype announced today it has agreed to acquire group messaging service GroupMe. Financial details of the deal were not revealed.

"Skype and GroupMe have a shared vision of creating applications and experiences that are the daily communications choice for a billion people," Skype CEO Tony Bates said in a statement announcing the deal. "The GroupMe team has created an incredibly sticky group messaging experience that works across mobile devices and platforms, making this a perfect addition to the voice, video and text products in the Skype family."

Related stories: Group-texting market shaken up with Facebook buy … Read more

With SXSW over, what's next for group messaging?

At the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) last week, messaging start-up GroupMe gave away 2,500 grilled cheeses branded with the company logo, and drained 13 kegs of Shiner Bock beer. It also saw over 2 million messages sent during groups created specifically for communication during SXSW, too, co-founder Steve Martocci told CNET.

"Things are going very well," Martocci said of the start-up's promotional efforts at SXSW, which included the "GroupMe Grill" strategically placed across the street from the Austin Convention Center for the distribution of the aforementioned free beer and grilled cheese to … Read more

Mastering social media saturation at SXSW

AUSTIN, Texas--There was a time, just a couple of years ago, when you could figure out almost everything going on at the South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSW) just by keeping an eye on the #SXSW hash tag.

Whether it was an impromptu wine party hosted by Gary Vaynerchuck or a Laughing Squid meet-up or word about a great panel going on, that hash tag was many people's essential organizing principle.

But with the explosive growth of SXSW and Twitter, the thousands who are prowling around day and night here this week looking for the next great thing to … Read more

GroupMe launches another update pre-SXSWi

Group messaging service GroupMe launched a big upgrade last week, timed to occur right before the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, the biggest event of the year for digital start-ups looking to make it big. But that wasn't enough: GroupMe today launched what co-founders Steve Martocci and Jared Hecht call "version 2.1-more-thing" in a nod to the famed Steve Jobs line.

What's new this time? Instead of making groups invite-only, groups can now be "joinable" through solicitations on Facebook and Twitter. There are also some smaller tweaks, including avatars alongside … Read more

The Silly Putty age of social media

For something that seems very rudimentary in a world of iPhone apps and fancy smartphone operating systems, text-messaging services were getting a whole lot of love at October's edition of the monthly New York Tech Meetup.

Along with about a dozen other start-ups eager to pitch the audience of potential partners, investors, and advisers, two back-to-back presentations from new companies called GroupMe and Fast Society showed off different takes on the same basic concept of group text messaging.

They have extremely similar premises. Both GroupMe and Fast Society require a single user with an iPhone (or also, in GroupMe'… Read more