Discover the World with Palringo Group Messaging and Chat with 11 Million People Who Like What You Like

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Starting today, anyone can find an online chat that speaks to their interests in minutes.  Palringo, the mobile group messaging company, today announced the addition of key discovery features to its popular service, which has more than 11 million users sending 10 billion messages a month within 300,000 groups.  By adding a suite of discovery features – which includes geotagging groups based on location to make it easier for people to find local communities of interest; searching by category, keyword or interest; and browsing by group stats, such as most active, types of messages, etc. – Palringo is providing users with new ways to connect with others who share their passions.  Palringo will exhibit at TechCrunch Disrupt, September 12-14 in San Francisco.

The rapidly-growing community of Palringo Groups covers every type of interest area, from gaming and entertainment to sports, technology and business.  Local, cultural and gaming groups are especially popular, with a high degree of activity.  Cultural groups use Palringo's voice messaging capabilities to learn new languages and practice speaking, while gaming groups are organizing themselves into clans to enhance their gaming experience.  Message traffic in these groups recently surged past 450 million messages in a single day.  Year-over-year growth in the number of messages sent via Palringo overall is more than 230 percent, with voice and picture messages both growing at a rate of more than 400 percent.  

The new discovery features, which are designed to further facilitate growth within the Palringo Groups community, include:

• Geotagging, which allows group administrators to add location information to the group profile, based on events and other factors.  Geotagging allows sports enthusiasts, gamers, and others to receive notification of relevant events happening in their area, become linked by or interested in a particular geographical location, or find local groups that interest them;
• The Groups Directory makes it possible for users to search for groups that interest them, letting them browse by category or interest, or to see the most popular groups and get a sense of the activity and messages within them.  They can also use the search function to find a group by any keyword, including their interests or location; and
• Group Stats allows users who are browsing groups to get a sense of the activity within the group before joining; they are able to quickly see how many active users a group has, which users are most active, and provides a sampling of messages so that potential members can get a sense of the discussion

"Palringo doesn't just support sending messages to people you already know - we offer an opportunity to connect and communicate with people all over the globe who share your interests," said Martin Rosinski, founder and CTO, Palringo.  "We've seen explosive growth within our community and have heard from users about groups discussing everything from game strategies to revolutionary protests, to organizing club meetings at a particular pub. Our new discovery features will help our users to form new connections and find groups that are talking about their passions and interests."

How Does it Work?

Palringo has developed its own end-to-end telco-grade messaging network with a proprietary protocol designed specifically to enable rich communications on any mobile device.  The Palringo client works on all major mobile OSes and provides a robust network with more than 300,000 active interest groups.  In addition to sending text-based group messages, users can also communicate in a P2P or informal friends/family group setting and enjoy a host of features including:

• Voice:  A flexible form of push-to-talk messaging that allows users to use their phones like walkie-talkies
• Pictures:  Palringo makes it easy to snap a picture on the phone, or select a picture from the on-device album, and drop it into an on-going discussion with an individual or within a group
• Location:  Palringo offers a rich location/presence functionality that adds an additional level of communication within groups
• Integration with Third-Party IM Services:  Users can easily chat with their friends who use services like AIM, Yahoo!, MSN Messenger and Facebook Chat through the Palringo client

There is no charge to download and use Palringo.

About Palringo

Founded in 2006, the UK and San Francisco-based Palringo has built a new type of mobile communication solution.  With over 11 million users sending billions of messages monthly, the company has built a hardened, scalable system that delivers a compelling user experience to the consumer and a valuable communications tool to the enterprise.  For more information, visit www.palringo.com

SOURCE Palringo