Demo: SmartDonuts brings social flair to group messaging

Typical mobile group messaging apps are great for staying in touch with a handful of friends, but they’re not ideal for large group chats, like organizations or companies that want to stay in touch with members and customers. Enter SmartDonuts, a group messaging app built with larger groups in mind.

Developed by Bellevue, Washington-based Inscos, SmartDonuts will not only allow users to chat with groups of friends, it will also let them join groups fitting their interests, allowing for more secure communication than is possible from Twitter or Facebook. The company showed off the app on stage today at the Demo Fall 2011 conference in Silicon Valley.

“It’s a real-time media for real-life stories,” founder and CEO Kevin Kim told VentureBeat.

The group messaging field is a crowded one, with entrants like GroupMe and Kik already fighting for attention from users. Now Facebook and Google are getting in on the group messaging fun as well, with the recently released Facebook Messenger app and Google+ Huddles. It remains to be seen if a newcomer can compete with more entrenched opponents, but SmartDonuts certainly has a shot at finding fans, especially with its focus on larger groups.

Inscos currently has 10 employees and was founded in 2009. The company has raised $180K in funding so far, with some coming from the CEO, and the rest from a friend’s company.

Inscos is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2011 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.