IN the space of one day in September, Cramlington-based group messaging service Palringo handled an eye-watering 114m messages.
“If it was due to a specific event, I wasn’t aware of it”, said founder and CTO Martin Rosinski. “In the last few weeks, we’ve broken records in terms of messages sent. It’s not necessarily down to a major event. A lot of it seems to be general growth.”
Palringo taps into the growing interest in group messaging, which allows people to hold discussions with smaller groups using data and text messaging. Set up in 2006, it allows users to use their phones like walkie- talkies, drop photos into discussions, chat with friends on messaging services from AIM to Facebook Chat.
It works on any phone, and it also features a geo-tagging element which allows users to discover groups nearby.
It also recently launched Palringo Enterprise zones, which allow companies to have their own Palringo group communication which is not visible to public users. For example, it recently signed a deal with 3M to help the global tech firm’s UK sales teams to communicate.
Palringo has cleared the 12m user mark, and at one point recently recorded 600m messages in a week. Half of its current users are on iPhone, and the company recently updated its service for Android, which makes up 20% of its user base.
Rosinski said: “I think our user base has broadened a little bit in recent months. There’s been more of a focus on entertainment and gaming groups. Just recently we’ve been focusing a little more on the entrepreneurs element.
“When they start, people tend to join a few groups that catch their eye, and then pick up groups that users recommend. It’s very popular in the gaming community, and you’ve got a few serious political groups out there. Some of the major changes we’ve brought in include location-based group discovery, which allows people to discover groups relevant to their area. ”
One interesting spike for Palringo came earlier this year. When the Syrian government shut down mainstream communications, many users moved to Palringo to share information. Saudi Arabia, Syria and Indonesia remain big areas for the service.
The use of such communications media in a crisis has made the news in the UK as well this year.
A lot of Press reports following the recent riots mentioned that participants communicated using Blackberry Messenger, and it was even suggested that platforms such as Twitter and Facebook should face “a brief temporary shutdown” during unrest.
Rosinski said: “In the case of Syria, it was extreme as internet connectivity was severed in the country. The discussion about restricting connection in Great Britain has been less extreme.”
