A Savvy Combination of Mobile and Facebook Virality Fuels Beluga’s Growth
Even though Facebook is pushing to convince mobile developers that it is a strong channel for growth, many of the top developers are still finding that a high app store ranking or using the phone’s address book is good enough to get users cheaply.
Very rarely do we see an app that successfully rests across multiple mobile platforms and Facebook.
However Beluga, a tiny but fast-growing group messaging startup, is showing that it is possible to mix viral tactics on Android, iOS and Facebook to pick up users. The three-person company is growing by at least 20% week over week among Facebook users, according to AppData.**
Founded by ex-Googlers Ben Davenport, Lucy Zhang and Jon Perlow, Beluga makes it easy to send messages to multiple friends on a mobile phone. It’s part of a wave of group messaging startups like GroupMe and Fast Society that rely on telephony startup Twilio’s APIs. The company has been bootstrapped so far. The trio are tight-lipped about potential revenue models or the future directions in which they might take the product.
Beluga uses several tactics to on-board users including –
