Create and Manage Your Own Social Network, With Mei

Ever want to reach out to friends, co-workers or family members with the same message, without spamming everyone in one large group chat (with “reply all” alerts that never seem to stop….)?  Well Mei has the answer for that.

Following our introduction of folders and labels, Mei’s next update introduces the ability to “Blast”, or bulk text, the contacts that you put into a certain “Label”.  And when they reply, you can toggle notifications off, so a big group doesn’t blow up your phone.  With these two new features, Mei enables you to effectively create your own social network, defined by you.

So, now you can find out if any of your officemates are up for a drink after work or ask your friends who live in New York a good place for ramen, without a giant group chat, texting one-by-one, or polling your whole social network.

Creating A Label

First create a label via the + sign, which is the rightmost tab on the tabs slider at the top of the conversation list.  This slider contains all the pre-set folders and custom labels you create.  Select a label name, e.g. “NYC”, “Close Friends”, “Coworkers” or anything you want, and it will appear as one of the Tabs. Start populating that label by dragging and dropping each of the conversations with contacts you want in the new label.

Tap on your new label to access that tab. Then tap that tab again to reveal a drop-down menu.  Hit “Blast” and you will be able to type a message that will be personalized for each contact.

Add your message: “Hey @contact, want to get a drink after work tonight?” and blast it to all contacts that appear under that label. The ‘@contact’ will be replaced by the first word of the contact’s name, as saved in your phone.  You can remove this for a generic message.

Each contact will receive an individual, personalized message and won’t be aware that this was a blast message from you.

Tab and notification management are important to make sure communication doesn’t get out of hand, which can easily happen when chatting with more than one person.

You can turn off the notifications for a Label, by tapping on the label and toggling Notifications ON or OFF, without affecting the notifications from your other contacts. You can easily delete or hide labels from the drop-down menu.  You can also re-arrange the order of tabs by holding a label down once you’re in the tab and dragging it to where you want it.

With the introduction of this “Blast” feature Mei hopes to make it quicker and easier for you to communicate with you contacts, create your own social network via your SMS app and manage their responses. Let us know what you think!