Be a smart groupie

Aug 06, 2011 - Ankit Fadia |

Age Correspondent

Technology has changed the way we socialise. Whenever we have our computers or mobile phones with us, then we usually indulge in socialising with our friends using popular social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and others. However, meeting friends face-to-face can never beat interacting with them on social networking websites. It doesn’t even come close. I love technology, but always prefer meeting my friends in person if given the option.
Typical weekend plans with friends involve either watching a film together or simply chilling at somebody’s home. Whatever it is, it usually involves a lot of planning and back and forth deliberation. Most of my planning with friends usually happens over text messages. However, making a plan with six to seven friends that everybody agrees with can be quite painful.
Let me describe how. You might first send a text message to six of your friends asking them where to meet. Some might reply saying that they want to meet in a coffee shop, others might reply that they want to watch a film, while another one might reply saying he cannot meet. Another wants to have Chinese. At the end of it you are so exasperated that you just feel like staying at home and not dealing with any of your friends. Almost wanting to give up, you now send another text message to all your friends, trying to make them all agree on a place, time, date, activity, cuisine, ambience and just about everything else. This whole planning process can be terribly inefficient, time consuming and expensive.
To solve this chaos and confusion, there is a wonderful free app known as Groupme which solves all problems. It works on almost all mobile phone platforms. Groupme allows you to create groups of various friends. Each group that is created is given a unique number. If anybody in the group sends a message to the group number, then the message is delivered to everybody else in the entire group. All replies are also sent to everybody in the group. Think of Groupme as group messaging. The best feature of this application is that nobody has to pay for any SMS messaging and all this is completely free, since it is done using the data plan on your cellphones! It is also possible to call the group number and get instantly connected to a group conference call with all your friends! Not only that, it is also possible to instantly share pictures with the group of your choice. Groupme is free, it’s fantastic and it completely changes the way you communicate and plan things with your friends, business colleagues or family members! What are you waiting for then, start making groups today!

The writer is a 25-year-old ethical hacking expert, a TV show host and the author of 14
best selling books.
He can be contacted at ankit@deccanmail.com

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