The group texting app is cool, but even the founders know it's less about the SMS and more about the power of groups.

By Daniel Roberts, reporter

GroupMe on mobile devices

If you've ever wanted to text a group of people all at once, you suddenly have a host of services to choose from. Apps that allow you to create a text message group have erupted in recent months, and venture capitalists have taken careful note of the interest users are showing.

The most prominent of the bunch, GroupMe, raised a hefty $10.6 million in Series B funding this month from Khosla Ventures and other investors. This is on top of an initial $850,000 in August from betaworks, SV Angel, First Round Capital and Lerer Ventures.

The fact that an idea born in May obtained over $11 million in funding by January shows that investors are betting big on group texting. And a number of other startups for the same function now exist as well, begun at various times in the past year. Among them are Beluga, BrightKite, Rabbly, Fast Society and textPlus. More