Very smart move by Facebook.

In just two months, Beluga has gone from non-existant to being an app that resides on the bottom dock of my iPhone. It’s there with Twitter, Safari, and the Camera app.

With services like textPlus, group messaging has already been big for some time. But newer services like Beluga, GroupMe, and Fast Society are poised to take it to the next level.

And I’ve been more bullish on Beluga than the rest because it doesn’t rely so heavily on text messaging — which remains a total rip-off and brings with it some cross-platform issues. Beluga worked seamlessly from day one on iPhone, Android, and the web.

But I’ve also been bullish on Facebook Messages and Groups. Both work very well and up the speed and scale of communication. But there’s been one big caveat with each: neither has a very good mobile experience. But with Beluga, they get just that right out of the box.

It’s also interesting that this is yet another acquisition that Google was likely out of serious contention for just because all of the Beluga employees are ex-Google.

I suppose there’s a price that makes anything make sense, but why not take that price from Facebook or someone else if you’ve already spent all that time at Google and chose to leave? Related: Foursquare, Twitter, etc.

Anyway, count me in the group that hopes that Facebook will use Beluga to make a killer stand-alone messaging app that ties into Facebook on the web/backend.

If they keep it simple, they can and will own this space.