GroupMe offers super-easy group texting and conference calls from any phone

As long as text messages have been around, there's never been a really easy solution for having a group conversation via SMS. GroupMe fixes that by making SMS more like an email thread with multiple recipients. See, your group has its own phone number, and everyone can just text (or call!) that to communicate with the whole crew. It's such a simple, elegant solution to such an old problem that I can't believe it was never done this way before.

Setup for GroupMe is ridiculously easy: just put in your mobile phone number, and your group will be created and get its own number. You can text commands to the new number to add friends or change the name of the group, or you can invite your friends to add themselves by texting a code to the group number. If a group gets too spammy, you can text #mute to the group number to stop getting messages for a while, and #unmute to start again.

Advantages of GroupMe: even the most old-and-busted dumbphone on the market can use it, as long as it supports texting, because GroupMe works like a regular phone number. Even without texting, you can still call a group number to start a conference call. Disadvantages: it's US-only for the moment, so international users are out of luck.

Tags: conference call, ConferenceCall, group chat, GroupChat, groupme, mobile, sms, text messaging, TextMessaging