Marshall Kirkpatrick has put together a breakdown of the features offered by eight SMS networking services. I think the key sentence in his post follows (emphasis mine):

Techcrunch ?Ǭª A look at eight multi-person SMS services

"Probably first popularized by Dodgeball, multiperson SMS is a feature (or a company - your call!) that quite a few people are coming out with all at once lately."

If it's my call, here's the call I'm making: multiperson SMS can be a feature or company. A feature seems more likely to me unless someone can figure out how to many enough money off the feature to legitimately turn it into a company. I've written about one of the services profiled - Dodgeball - here before, and think the service is a great way to keep in touch with friends by texting shout-outs of the latest bar (Groveland Tap), restaurant (Costco for pizza over lunch today) or event (Vikings game) one of us is attending. Based on the user-id numbers on Dodgeball.com, it looks like they have around 53,703 registered users, assuming the numbering started at 1 (welcome to Dodgeball, Dirk K.). I've never seen an ad on the site or in a text message, which would make me wonder how they were keeping the lights on, except they're owned by Google. With that many registered users where only a fraction are likely active users, the ad deal opportunities may be somewhat limited at this point. The demographic information gathered by the service is impressive, but the audience remains small.

What's the future of SMS networking sites? I have a theory based on the following thoughts: The biggest hold-up at this point are cell phone service's ridiculous pricing for text messages (it's cheaper to call someone for 3 hours at 9pm than to text, "I Love You!"), and duplication of social networks in more than one service. I know that the former (cell phone plans) is an issue because friends have told me they won't join Dodgeball because they don't want to pay for the texts. Plans will likely find some sanity over time, but for now, that's hard to overcome. Services with additional charges ON TOP of phone charges are going to be fighting a major uphill battle. I can't even imagine asking a friend to join a service called Moblabber that will cost them $0.30 per message plus their phone charges or Loopt for $2.99/month.

Requiring duplication of social networks is where this game will be won or lost. Why should I have to invite all of my friends to join yet another social networking site just so we can send SMS broadcasts to each other when this could simply be integrated into a social networking site we already use like MySpace or FaceBook? If that's the case, this is a feature rather than a company. Of course, that feature may come from something that started as a company if billion dollar companies like MySpace and Facebook are too lazy to build out the feature themselves.

If I had to pick a future winner in this space as of today, I'd go with Facebook. Why? Because Facebook:

1. Is already are dabbling in this space with Mobile Alerts.
2. Has a large social network in place, thus avoiding social network duplication
3. Would build additional demographic information Facebook could use for local advertising.
4. Would give Facebook users an even more addicting social networking experience on their mobile phones.

The only way I can imagine a SMS networking feature to succeed as a company is if it listens to Leslie Orchard and provides a painless way to sync social networking contacts between services like this. But in the case of SMS networking, I think this will still fall short of what Facebook could do in this space.