A mere month and a half after launching, Brightkite says its new Group Text feature is a big hit with users in the United States.
According to the startup, which boasts more than 2 million registered users, the average Group Text user sends a whopping 17 messages per day. Already, its total usage is growing 19 percent on average per day.
Brightkite is now sending more than 20 million messages a month, nearly half of which are regular SMS messages, we’re told.
Today, the self-proclaimed “social discovery network” is announcing the availability of its Group Text service in Canada.
For those who are not familiar with the service: Group Text is a free location-based service that works through text messaging, the web, mobile web, and iPhone and iPod touch devices. The product allows users to text up to 25 people at once – when one person replies, everyone gets the message, so you can go back and forth.
Best of all (and probably the reason why it’s becoming popular so quickly), the basic service is free which means less coin for greedy carriers – usual rates for texting apply, obviously.
For the record, the difference between Group Text and say, Twitter, is the tie-in with location awareness and closed circle communication. Although one could argue that Brightkite is thus becoming more like Twitter with its one-to-many communication tool while Twitter is becoming more like Brightkite with all its recently launched and announced features.
