Another Upstart: Celly expands beyond Occupy Movement to improve student-teacher communication

For all of the technology in our pockets these days, text messages remain the common denominator—and connector—for anyone carrying a mobile device. And no one knows that better than Celly, a Portland startup that’s taking full advantage of this shared communications platform.

The service, which gained substantial traction as a communications channel for the Occupy Movement, has seen significant traction in another diverse and often underserved community: schools.

“We collaborated directly with educators, students, parents, city leaders, community associations, and political movements to develop Celly—and we learned why social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ don’t work for spontaneous sharing in real world scenarios,” said Russell Okamoto, co-founder and CEO of Celly. “Celly overcomes lack of privacy, on-boarding friction, oversharing threats, and expensive device requirements that are showstoppers with existing social networks.”

And now, getting started with the service is even easier. Thanks to Celly’s new Android app, launched this week.

Using Celly, organizations can spontaneously create private, mobile social networks to communicate, collaborate, and share information using group messages, polls, reminders, voice alerts, notes and real-time feed tracking. The free Celly service powers over 20,000 “cells” in schools, homes, local governments, community groups and neighborhood associations, event planners, teams and clubs, businesses, and the national and local Occupy Movements.

Celly is another project that has taken advantage of Portland’s Upstart Labs accelerator to augment their existing team. Other Upstart Labs alums include Chirpify and MoPix.

For more information or to set up your own cell, visit Celly.

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy