Virgin Mobile USA announced the launch of 3jam SMS 2.0 last week. The new, free-to-join service improves basic text messaging by allowing friends and family to stay connected with group communication, enabling customers to have multi-party text-message conversations.

3jam SMS 2.0 enables Virgin Mobile customers to send a text message to any number of friends simultaneously, have everyone know who received the message, and allow subsequent replies to go to everyone using SMS. The 3jam application is free and requires no subscription. Standard text messaging rates apply. Virgin Mobile customers can sign up on the menu of their WAP deck or at www.3jam.com/virgin. The SMS recipients do not need to sign up.

SMS is by far the most popular non-voice service for mobile subscribers in the U.S., and according to Pamela Clark Dickson of Informa Telecoms and Media, in 2007 it will generate revenues of $60 billion for carriers worldwide. According to Gartner Dataquest, the number of SMS messages will top 1.8 trillion in 2010.

Consumers have shown interest in 3jam's off-deck service, which, since soft launching in September 2006, has gained hundreds of thousands of monthly active users. These users have discovered 3jam.com and have taken their "txt" to the next level. Currently, 3jam is building a global service for transiting, billing and clearing multi-party SMS messages, with many additional features to be available soon.