Pop looked at tweets from March 11-15 about GroupMe, Beluga, Fast Society, Kik and Yobongo. Not only did GroupMe garner the most chatter, 19 percent of that chatter was positive, nearly double the next most popular.

Kik, recently funded by Union Square Ventures and RRE, grabbed the third spot in terms of overall buzz, but also had by far the highest level of negative sentiment.

The idea behind these apps is that they let people form intimate little cliques, although it seems like this didn't always pan at at SXSW. "In practice group messaging is kind of weak on the exclusivity thing, because you’re almost always roped into groups with at least one person you don’t like which prevents you from sharing potentially useful information regarding your whereabouts," griped Alexia Tsotsis.