Beluga Review

I've been hearing whispering about Beluga - a new application for phones and on the Internet that's similar to Twitter but lets the user only send the message to a specific group of people, called a "pod."  I decided to give it a try.

Six of my sorority sisters and I text constantly.  And we always send the messages to the other six.  When the iPhones could do group messaging, I got that set up.  But only five of us had AT&T iPhones, so we couldn't see the sassy responses from the two non-iPhoners.  Then one got the Verizon iPhone, which surprisingly and frustratingly doesn't connect with AT&T group messaging!  And the last dumb-phoner is getting an Android next month so we definitely wouldn't be able to see her messages.  My solution: a trial run of Beluga.

Beluga has an application that works on all smart phone platforms and the Internet.  I set up our pod and invited the girls.  By that afternoon, we had everyone on Beluga and we were seeing everyone's messages!  Here's how Beluga works on an iPhone::

On the homepage, the user can see all the pods they're in and people they might know.  It's possible to change the pod's image, which we've changed to a sorority symbol.  When some of the girls were trying to change their profile image, they ended up changing the pod image.  It was a quick fix and funny after more than one girl made that mistake!  Also, the pod can be named.  Yes, my pod's name looks funny, but it's all of our first initials and I wasn't feeling creative when I made it!

When the user selects their pod, this is what shows up.  The name of the pod is at the top and the comments are listed with the most recent one first.  This is an example of the chat and what it looks like when someone's added to the pod.

To send a message, the user taps where it says, "Send a message."  The user then has the option to turn on their geolocator, attach a photo, or just send text.  When the geolocator is used, an extra icon shows up next to the time stamp (exampled above in my messages).  Tapping on that links to a Google map with the location the person was when they sent the message.

It's possible to set up a push notification with Beluga.  I have it set so that it shows up like a text message (above) but doesn't buzz or make a sound.  It's the only push notification I have on my phone so I always see it.  I also like that it tells me which pod the message is from because I have a feeling I'll be in more pods soon!  My friend has push notifications for almost every app under the sun so sometimes she misses that there's a new message.  But, the app shows up with the red circled #1 that indicates there a message - even if there's 8 messages!
There's another feature of Beluga that I haven't tested yet.  It's an event planner within a pod, and I'm looking forward to using it soon!

 The website is just as easy as the app to use.  Nothing difficult to decode here and it lets your dumb-phone friends join in on the conversation!  It's sending my friend who still has a dumb phone text messages and letting her text back in response.

Potential Use in the Newsroom
I see two uses for this in the newsroom: intra-newsroom communications and community communications.  Beluga would be helpful for intra-newsroom communication during breaking news because everyone who was working on the story could see the information at the same time, instead of having to relay it.  It could also be used for teams, like the investigative team, to brainstorm stories or new leads to follow when they aren't able to get together for a meeting.  As with breaking news, it could keep the team in the loop during an investigation.


A community pod would be an interesting way to converse with your viewers.  Creating pods for weather spotters or other topics that create conversation within the community would be helpful in gathering information and photos from all over the viewing area.  It would still allow the newsroom to guide the conversation while the community talks within itself.


Overall, this app is working better than I expected it to.  It's solved a problem for me and actually increased my communications with my friends.  And it's worked well on every phone!  I plan to continuing using this and possibly joining or creating more pods - even within the newsroom.