and use it to communicate with a group of about 20
    friends. Most of them aren't "technical" people. 

I'm insanely curious about the human side of things here. How did you get them to buy into this idea in the first place? That sounds like quite an achievement.

The non-technical folks in my life generally struggle with paths of least resistance (iMessage, etc) and it's hard to imagine getting them onto some alternative platform/protocol.