techPresident - text messaging - Comments

Rock the Vote's text messages

ChrisKennedy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:23:33 -0500

Rock the Vote sent out over 100,000 GOTV text messages on Nov. 3rd and 4th. We partnered with Google to include both polling place information and a link to a WAP-based Google Map.

Here's an example message: "Chris: On Tues 11.04.08 Rock the Vote @ Latin American Youth Center, 1419 Columbia Rd NW, Washington,DC 20009; view map at http://is.gd/5RBP"

We incorporated a randomized field experiment into this project so stay tuned for results in Spring 2009.

Obama Texts

muddimar — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:05:12 -0500

I live in NC, but my family lives in Texas, so I've gotten texts for both states. I've received 5 so far today, only from Obama, and I'm sure I'll get more before the polls close:

10:11 am: "People who love their country can change it" by voting - interesting patriotic appeal
12:10 pm: Vote for Obama in Texas
12:22 pm: Vote during lunch and "help make history"
1:38 pm: Vote even though there is rain in NC
5:19 pm: Polls close in 2 hours in NC

Most of the text messages also include the times the polls close, a Web site and phone number to use for information, and a tip: people who are in line when the polls close in NC are still eligible to vote.

Obama Texts, lots and lots

sjxylib — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:20:45 -0500

Obama Texts, lots and lots of Texts, I lived in Florida until August and now I live in VA, so I get both.

8:30am - Let me know the polls are open in VA and the times
9:05am - "people who love their country and change it" tell everyone you know to vote for Barack
10:25am - "our moment is now" tell your friends to vote
12:12pm - "Thanks for all your hard work today. It is critical we stay knocking on doors until 7pm"
12:52pm - "Every vote matters. people who love their country and change it"
2:25pm - "our moment is now" if you are in line at 7 they must count your vote.
and 3:18pm - "we can make history today if we get out the vote"

I am sure I will get more as it approaches 7pm

Yeah, they're texting us

Ruby Sinreich — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:04:20 -0500

In spite of the fact that I voted early last week, I have received three text messages from Obama so far TODAY.

10:19am: People who love their country can change it! Make sure everyone you know votes today for Barack by 7:30pm. Info at: 877-624-2426 or VoteForChange.com

12:26pm: Vote for Barack during lunch! Make sure everyone votes today for Barack. For voting info call 877-624-2526. Help make history, fwd this message to everyone.

1:38pm: This election is too important to let rain prevent us from creating the change we need. Volunteer and vote rain or shine. Polls in NC are open until 7:30 pm.

Finally received a text

bhschenker — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:57:48 -0500

I live in VA with a NY cell phone number. After wondering why I hadn't gotten a text to remind me to vote I finally received one mid afternoon At about 3:30pm I finally got a text to "make sure everyone I know votes for Barack today."

Seems a little late to me to receive the text, and isn't it a better practice to text a day or two before election day then follow up the day of?

Anyone thought about having people text in when they voted, to self identify themselves saving GOTV effort? It'd take some database work to match cell phones to voter rolls, but...

Brett Schenker
5B Consulting
http://www.5bconsulting.com

Collecting cell-phone #s

The9th — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:53:36 -0400

Can't the campaign staffs just ask the NSA for their list of all the cell-phone numbers in the US? (And the rest of the world, too, but most of the overseas #s wouldn't connect to registered US voters, right?)

Or just pile on with a quick spate of FOI requests.

After all, it's OUR government, OUR phone numbers, and OUR public--what the heck is that noun, anyway?--ahh, our public SERVANTS.

It was leaked

Luigi Montanez — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:12:26 -0400

The campaign meant to send the text message at 8am Saturday morning, but CNN was able to get confirmation of the pick the night before and ran the story, so the campaign had to hit Send once the news was leaked.

the text message

smspolitical — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:30:32 -0400

I am delighted to see the Obama team begin to really use a mobile devise as a voting contact tool. Since they are in control of their own deployment, it seems a bit strange they sent the message at 3:00 am??? Why a more tasteful time was not chosen I think their mobile director should answer.
Beaudon

There is a more personal way coming soon ...

richsr — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:07:37 -0400

So, instead of using text messages (aka "SMS" for Short Message Service) you can use MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) for images, audio video & rich text. Soon we will see such announcements including images and a personal audio message, maybe even a short MMS video. -Rich Sr./Cellyspace.com

How do you not plan for that?

Ryan Alexander — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:11:41 -0400

The selection of the VP is one of the most planned out exercises that a campaign goes through.

It seems really odd to me that they didn't have a plan in place to get the text message out quickly when the media leaked it.

Does it really take 3-4 hrs to get a 146 character text message out the door?

I could see it taking that long if they didn't have the website ready to change over to the new Obama/Biden look, but once again if that was the reason for the delay its incredibly poor planning on their part.

I would have thought they would have had the internet team create a separate version of the website for each possible candidate to 1) prevent leaks from their internet team and 2) to be ready to go if the media leaked it or if some other event caused them to move up the deadline.

This would have also prevented the unfortunate coincidence of having people on the East Coast receive the text message at 3am...

Email vs. SMS

Luigi Montanez — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:53:25 -0400

Barack's team missed an enormous opportunity to communicate personally, to me, from Barack.

I think such pretense can work in email, where distinct "voices" can be reinforced over time, and where the From: name is easily set. So the candidate emails about The Big Things, the campaign manager about the political landscape and state of the race, the finance director about fundraising numbers, the field director about volunteering, etc.

But SMS is limited to 160 characters, and there is no From: line. The text message wasn't coming from Barack's personal cell phone number. It came from 62262, the campaign's short code. All users know that Obama himself isn't sending millions of individual text messages. They know that the campaign uses a service to do such a thing.

As such, the campaign just cut the pretense and spoke from the campaign voice. They've done the same for their past messages I've received: "Watch Barack and Hillary together in Unity, NH" and "Watch Barack live in Berlin".

SMS is a very restrictive medium, and I think the decision to embrace those constraints rather than act outwardly phony was a good one by the Obama campaign.

Normal people

Luigi Montanez — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:45:03 -0400

Take a step out of your political professional/junkie shoes for a moment. Normal people simply don't sit in front of their computers on a Friday night, refreshing the political insider blogs of ABC News and CNN. When word broke even later on TV, it was extremely late on Friday night, not exactly the time of high viewership. Isn't it quite likely then, that for the vast majority of people who opted in to receive that text message, that the Biden pick was in fact breaking news?

I don't think we'll ever know the concrete numbers, but I do think it's quite presumptuous to assume that all 3 million people who signed up had the news spoiled for them because it was spoiled for you.

Tech President needs to challenge themselve on this.........

Freedomfighter — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:11:39 -0400

For all the use of technology the Obama campaign is praised for, they still do not seem to be able to make the best use of it. Even I got that stupid VP text message. So what? I am not an Obama supporter. The Obama campaign appears not to know what to do with the data they are getting or how sort it out.

Worse yet, they have no idea how best to deal with the support they do get. Obama spent as twice as much money on advertising than McCain raised last month, yet Obama is tied in the polls. If I was an Obama supporter, I would have a lot of concerns about being scammed by slick marketing. Why is it that when Obama spends money on ads, the polls favor him even less?

Groups like Moveon are giving away Obama buttons and bumper stickers. Are there limits? How many of these buttons going to Obama fans in Kenya and Indonesia, who are not US voters?

Here are questions which need to be answered: Is Obama just a cult of personality exploiting money from his supporters? Is his campaign merely exploiting feeble-minded people who are emotionally distraught over the state of the world? Is technology merely empowering the meek, ignorant and naive people who do not have ability to resist a cult of personality like Obama?

It's 6am EST and I still haven't been TXTed

Micah L. Sifry — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 06:04:56 -0400

From a tech point of view, the mass txt message seems to have failed. And Patrick is right, waking people up at 3am isn't fun, or funny. I somehow doubt they were trying to see if Hillary was going to pick up the phone.

But from an earned media standpoint, and an organizing standpoint, the mass txt experiment looks pretty successful. Three million names is phenomenal, especially if they can now segment them by zipcode.

Micah