• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 10, 2016

Adding to an already crowded text and mobile messaging space, Cola just launched its iPhone app in Apple’s App Store.

Selling itself as a smarter way to communicate and accomplish specific tasks, Cola’s texts -- or “Cola bubbles” -- incorporate other functions that users’ already have on their smartphones, including calendars, maps, and geo-tracking.

“The motto of our company is ‘text less, do more’ because we know all too well the pain of trying to do one simple thing with text and having it turn into an endless process of app hopping, back and forth suggestions, questions and time-wasting nonsense,” stated Cola CEO David Temkin.

Rather than engaging in a long back-and-forth with friends, Cola users can simply swap calendars to determine a good meet-up date and current geo-locations to actually find each other on the agreed upon date.

In addition, rather than limiting its functionality, Cola is a “Messaging OS,” according to Temkin. That means third-party developers to create new bubbles within the Cola app. “We recognize that texting is the center of our mobile life,” Temkin added. “It’s the core experience of having a smartphone.”

Indeed, text messaging has experienced a sort of renaissance in recent years.

That fact was made clear when Facebook dropped about $20 billion on WhatsApp in late 2014. Since then, the app’s popularity has soared. In fact, WhatsApp surpassed 1 billion monthly active users, and is presently processing 42 billion messages a day.

By 2018, the number of messaging app users worldwide will reach 2 billion, representing 80% of smartphone users, eMarketer expects.

Expected to officially launch in late spring, Cola is presently working with a select group of third-party developers as it nears completion of its software development kit. Till then, new third-party and partner bubbles are expected to debut in the coming weeks.

Existing Cola investors include Tribeca Angels, Naval Ravikant and his AngelList Syndicate, which includes AOL founder Steve Case.