How do iMessage Groups work?

[orange42]

For those of you familiar with BBM groups, is iMessage group chat similar to that? Will we be able to just pick a group of people and create a group, title the group, and just chat back and forth like a chat room with everyone easily seeing every message? That was one of the things I loved about the BB, being in a group with 8 friends and just seeing what everyone was up to with everyone able to reply.

Posted this in the FAQ but got no replies.

 

[jackhdev]

It seems that you just enter in the name of somebody and Apple automatically detects whether they can use iMessage. If you try to iMessage multiple people, I don't think creating a chat room is possible. iMessage basically saves you money by not making you text when you can send your data through 2G/3G or Wifi. I don't believe there is anything else it does. The user doesn't even notice the difference between iMessage and texting.

 

[orange42]

Well it says there is group messaging, so there's gotta be something to it. And overall it seems to want to be similar to BBM so whoever has tried iOS 5 can you give some insight on the group messaging?

 

[iLog.Genius]

Haven't seen in but wouldn't seeing how it's integrated with the Message app, wouldn't a "group" chat be just sending a message to multiple recipients? I don't see how it could be done any other way because iMessage doesn't have a standalone app like BBM. Right now, iMessage is just that, a way to save you money and is very raw and doesn't really do what BBM does, at least not yet.

 

[mikelegacy]

IDK, not that many people can use iMessage that i know yet. I wish I could use it more

 

[orange42]

I don't see why they would emphasize group messaging than, being that the old iOS phones did it, as well as any basic phone of the last 7 years?

 

[kre62]

Group messaging is in fact as you hoped, OP. I saw a video of it running. It is basically a multi-person instant chat. Its different then a group text as thats an outgoing broadcast only. When people respond it only comes back to the sender, not the group.

With group messaging, all participants see all messages simultaneously.

 

[orange42]

Group messaging is in fact as you hoped, OP. I saw a video of it running. It is basically a multi-person instant chat. Its different then a group text as thats an outgoing broadcast only. When people respond it only comes back to the sender, not the group.

With group messaging, all participants see all messages simultaneously.

Thanks, that's pretty awesome. Can you or anyone provide a screen shot of this?

 

[Anastacio]

I have tested iMessage and its group feature out a lot.
It has to be said, that you can't give the group a name (yes you can add a subject to each message you send, but it's far from the same) and you can't add people to a group. You have to create a new group and add everyone again. And if you change your "name" from number to email, then the group splits into two messages in your inbox, kinda weird.