When we are asked to explain what a ZygoHub is - this has been happening quite a lot recently at Christmas parties - people often say “Oh, so you’re like Twitter.” We love Twitter, but we have to tell people that whilst our service uses the web and SMS, we’re not actually that much like Twitter at all.

Anyway, we thought it might be worth dedicating a blog entry to Twitter, by way of spreading a little seasonal good will.

Twitter (www.twitter.com)
We think of Twitter as an SMS-based blogging service. Basically, it allows you to write a blog entry wherever and whenever, using your mobile, and send it to all of your mates.

The Twitter user - let’s call her Jane - creates an account using her mobile number, then all messages sent to the Twitter service number are relayed out to their ‘followers’, people who have signed up to receive Jane’s updates.

The number one reason why Twitter is different from Zygo is that, with Twitter, if a follower tries to reply to Jane’s update, by default that message doesn’t go to Jane, unless Jane is also a follower of the person who has received Jane’s update.

So it is just like a blog: if someone has subscribed to my blog, that doesn’t mean I have subscribed to theirs. (Twitter has recently added a function that allows people to reply directly to the sender of a Twitter update if they want to.) Zygo is more about setting up a group conversation than broadcasting messages to a group.

TeamSorted (www.teamsorted.com)
This is a group messaging service aimed at sports teams. We love it because it is so practical, and the guys who set it up are so passionate about what they are doing. Using Teamsorted, if you are running a football, cricket, rugby or any sort of team, you can keep them organised and updated using email and SMS, sending messages out and receiving their replies on the web. It’s a bit different from Zygo, because with our service, messages can be sent and received by anyone in the group, and messages can come back to both the web and the phone. Oh, and of course with Zygo, every group has its own unique mobile number.

3jam (www.3jam.com)
The guys at 3jam have built a multi-person, reply-to-all group messaging service that allows people to set up ad hoc multi-person SMS chats. Basically, once you’ve set up an address book with your friend’s numbers and nicknames, you can start a chat with a selected group of those friends by sending their nicknames to the service number. Your friends don’t have to have signed up to the service themselves to join in the chat. It’s great for people who want to get different groups of friends together to chat at different times.

3jam recently raised $4m in Series B funding and have done a deal with Virgin in the USA - go guys! Go group messaging!