Mobile Industry Review » Obama

Obama’s VP text = an extra $118m for US operators?

Ewan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:54:08 +0000

So reckons Scott M. Fulton of BetaNews.

If Sprint’s early estimates are accurate and if they’re reflective of other carriers’ traffic on the day Sen. Barack Obama announced his running mate, the resulting flow of text message traffic on the nation’s networks could theoretically have generated more than $118 million in extra revenue for the nation’s cell phone carriers.

His maths are sound — on the basis that people are being charged for their texts.? If you’re sat around on an unlimited plan then there’s limited additional revenue for the operators.

Obama screws up VP text message. Stupid.

Ewan — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:04:47 +0000

Morra Aarons-Mele, writing in The Guardian’s Comment Is Free, reports that she knew the Vice President’s identity two hours before her exclusive text message arrived from the Obama campaign. Why? It was reported on CNN. (See our original coverage of the concept.)

Crazy.

The whole point of the Obama VP text scenario was, I thought, to sidestep the mainstream media and win over the doubting electorate by going direct to them. Or maybe it was just a jump on the bandwagon and the ability to sign-up more mobile numbers to try and boost donations?

Next.

Obama will announce Vice President position by SMS

Ewan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:10:36 +0000

FINALLY!

FINALLY they’re getting it. The US polling geniuses are deploying the medium of text properly. It’s been a real annoyance of mine for a while. Over here in the UK, we’ve more or less got no clue. (I refer you to Tony Blair’s Big Conversation rubbish a while ago — 35p a text I think it cost the electorate to use).

Presidential Nominee Obama has announced that he’s going to tell his supporters of his Vice President selection first. By text message. (Or email).

Very clever. First that’s a news item in itself. I read about it in USA Today. That’s going to get quite a few folk signed up if they haven’t already.

Second, he’s sidestepping mainstream media. Love it. If mainstream media want to find out, they’ll need to subscribe too.

Third, he gets control of the message. It’s his spinners who’ll craft the text message content and who’ll get the message directly into the minds of his key supporters. Before any mainstream media filtering.

The USA Today quotes Micha of Techpresident.com:

Micah Sifry, co-founder of the blog Techpresident.com, says the Obama campaign is “charting new ground” in using cellphones to keep supporters interested and engaged. The offer to text the vice presidential news is “a big carrot to hand people,” he says.

Interesting, interesting.

If you’re in the States, sign-up by texting VP to 62262. Or sign-up online.