How simple mobile tech can put America back to work
Guest Post Hourly workers represent more than 59 percent of the U.S. workforce, but they're often left behind by recruiting solutions aimed at workers who have smartphones or laptops.
Kik Messenger raises $19.5M as it aims to lead the HTML5 revolution
April 22, 2013 12:02 PM
Devindra Hardawar
Only a few weeks after hitting 50 million users, the popular mobile messaging service Kik has received a new chunk of funding to fuel its impressive growth.
Hot messaging app MessageMe already has over 1M users, nabs $1.9M in funding
March 19, 2013 8:21 AM
Sean Ludwig
MessageMe has been busy since its launch a week and a half ago. The messaging application has been cut off from Facebook’s Open Graph, raised $1.9 million in seed funding, and attracted more than 1 million users
SMS inventor reflects on 20th anniversary of text messaging … in an SMS interview
December 3, 2012 10:12 AM
Tom Cheredar
The "Father of SMS" (aka text messages) recently participated in an interview with the BBC to celebrate the communication's 20th anniversary.
mBlox: app developers, here’s how to revive old apps (and 30K free messages to help)
November 6, 2012 4:39 AM
John Koetsier
You built the app. Everyone came, and you were over the moon. But now, months later, no-one is opening your app, and you're pulling out your hair.
How to use Twitter in a hurricane
October 29, 2012 9:49 PM
Dylan Tweney
When you lose internet access, you can still get important updates from Twitter via SMS. Here's how.
With Zlango icons, words are so yesterday
June 28, 2012 3:11 PM
Rebecca Grant
Striking just the right tone in a text message or conveying complex ideas via tweets can be quite a challenge, which must be why Zlango, an app that enables users to communicate with images rather than words, just hit the …
Facebook Messenger matures into rich chat app with bigger photos and in-app notifications
June 25, 2012 4:57 PM
Jennifer Van Grove
Facebook’s 11-month-old Messenger mobile app for sending texts and exchanging photos and locations with friends, is putting on its big boy pants today, maturing into a full-featured chat and messaging service with bigger photos, better notifications, and all-around improved performance.…
Sex, drugs, and SMS: A look inside teens’ texting habits
June 14, 2012 11:32 AM
Jolie O'Dell
We’ve long suspected teenagers are disgusting animals, and a recent survey from a mobile message monitoring company pretty much confirms those suspicions.
In a data-gathering exercise spanning hundreds of thousands of messages per month from phones across the U.S., TxtWatcher …
With Messages beta for OS X, Apple is truly on its way to killing SMS
February 16, 2012 11:00 AM
Tom Cheredar
In addition to the announcements about Apple’s next operating system Mac OS X Mountain Lion, the company rolled out a beta edition of its iMessages chat app today.
Apple previously launched its iMessages for the iPhone and iPad as an …
How SMS messaging is changing the world (Infographic)
Guest Post
Though we think of texting as just as a means of day-to-day communication, it has been utilized in developing countries in a variety of ingenious ways to improve the lives of the people there. Surprisingly, cell phones in the developing …
Demo: Poosh wants to help you lose weight with text messages
September 14, 2011 3:41 PM
Heather Kelly
Can text messages really motivate you to get off the couch and into the gym? The fitness buffs behind Poosh, a new motivational SMS startup launching today, think they can.
People who sign up for the free Poosh.com service will …
With GroupMe’s acquisition, zero revenue companies are back in style
August 22, 2011 1:10 PM
Matthew Lynley
Group texting application GroupMe’s high-profile acquisition today by Skype could be the first indication that the zero-revenue company is back in style.
Of course, there’s a long history of companies with zero revenue being acquired. But this is one of …
GroupMe’s latest mobile app sports more messaging options, still rocks SMS
August 3, 2011 11:31 AM
Matthew Lynley
I have a bit of a crush on group-texting application GroupMe, which lets a bunch of phone owners jump into an ad-hoc chat room that’s powered by text messages. It’s simple, and best of all, it doesn’t use data.
The …
How I survived my first E3 with technology failing left and right
June 10, 2011 3:41 PM
Matthew Lynley
This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was loud, crowded, and reporters trying to cover the show ran into technology problems left and right.
This was my first time covering E3 with VentureBeat’s gaming guru Dean Takahashi, so I had almost …
Textingly launches live chat tool for text campaigns
Textingly, a company that let’s businesses manage text messages to customers, today announced it has launched a live chat tool for businesses to engage with customers via text in real-time from the web.
The company officially launched last year around …
Week in review: PlayStation Network's big outage
Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
Sony’s PlayStation Network suffers big outage — The good news is that Sony has more than 70 million registered …
How GroupMe and SMS saved 14 lost souls at Coachella
There’s simple elegance in a text message: Maybe you send an emoticon or an “I love you,” but more often than not it’s just a quick update. It’s like a Tweet, except more ubiquitous. You can’t count on people reading …
Noteleaf texts you quick info on the person you're about to meet with
Noteleaf, a contact information aggregator for Google’s Gmail and Calendar apps, launched a number of new features for its text-messaging notification service today.
Noteleaf’s edge is that it doesn’t require a whole lot of extra work to use the contact …
Group texting startup GroupMe raises $10.6M despite being a long way from revenue
GroupMe, a service that lets users start a group chat using text messages, announced today that it has raised $10.6 million in its second round of funding — but it won’t be generating any kind of revenue any time soon.…
