With SXSW coming up, the race to become everybody’s favorite group chat application is on in full force. I wrote an article entitled 3 Fun & Simple Phone Apps That Will Change The Way You Text Message back in November in which I shared Kik, GroupMe, and Fast Society with you, but the game is changing ever so quickly.

When I first shared these apps with you, their core focus was text messaging. Now though, these apps are starting to get more social, offering some very useful options and integration with some of your favorite services. GroupMe, in fact, recently added Foursquare integration to its service, which I think is huge.

Beluga, however, might just be the best cross-platform messaging app for groups, of them all. In this article, I’ll show you what’s so special about it and what you can use it for.

What Is Beluga?

Like BlackBerry Messenger, but for iPhone & Android.
Like GroupMe, but no text messaging fees.
Like Twitter, but private to your friends.

“It’s like Gmail for text messages.”

Beluga (directory app) allows you to quickly create private groups, called pods, to stay in touch with your friends, coordinate plans, and share your life. The app lets you send and receive instant updates, location information, and photos, all via push notification, which of course means that there are no SMS/text messaging fees. That’s right, you can send as many messages as you want without having to worry about being charged for anything.

With Beluga’s full multi-way communication, everyone in a pod will see every update made by individual members of the group. This is perfect for staying in touch with family and close friends (kind of like Path), planning events or a night out on the town, keeping up with different groups of friends, or just anything spontaneous really.

As I mentioned, you’ll get real-time alerts using the push notifications feature on your phone. You can control these alerts from the settings and you can even set them differently for each individual pod.

Users can share photos and their location with certain pods if they wish, and you’re free to invite anyone in your contacts list with an email or mobile phone. You can add a new member anytime and they will instantly be looped into the conversation that’s already been taking place.

Beluga works with any phone and has native apps for iPhone and Android devices. You can access your messages from your phone or the web, and Beluga’s “pods” are completely private, meaning that there is no over-sharing of your photos, location, etc. with others who you wouldn’t want seeing that information.

You can download Beluga for the iPhone here and for Android here.

Conclusion

Ironically, as I just finished writing this article about how great Beluga is I’m seeing reports on Twitter saying that Facebook just acquired them (I’m not kidding). If that is true, I’m sure the social giant will have some big things in store for this app, so definitely keep an eye on it.

What do you think of group chat clients? Do you have a personal favorite?