Much has been made of Barack Obama using text messaging to announce his Vice President selection. It was estimated that 2.9 million text messages went out – representing one of the largest mobile marketing events to date.
The Obama campaign has been aggressively using emerging communication technologies and applications such as SMS, Social Networks and Email. For many young people (a key Obama target), who don’t have landline phones, being connected means having a mobile device on them at all time. Accordingly, Obama’s technology push is very much a necessity.
Text Messaging or Short Message Service (abbreviated as SMS) means the transmission of short text messages to and from a mobile phone, fax machine and/or IP address. Messages must be no longer than 160 alpha-numeric characters and contain no images or graphics.
The reason SMS was late to takeoff in the United States was the incompatibility between carriers, so if you wanted to sent a text to an AT&T subscriber if you were a T Mobile subscriber, it wouldn’t work.