SMS voters at the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2008 tradeshow in San Francisco have "elected" Barack Obama the next President of the United States.

Using the mBlox mobile transaction network and mobile technology provided by Local Solutions Network, participants from around the country voted via text message. Attendees cast their ballots by texting keyword "McCain" or "Obama" to the short code 2VOTE (28683) to take part in this mini election.

"LSN and mBlox wanted to highlight to the attendees a very topical application of SMS text-based campaigns," said Paul Cegielski, director of marketing for mBlox, Sunnyvale, CA. "It allowed us to demonstrate in a very real way how a short code campaign works giving the attendees a way to interact in a fun and interesting manner.

"Additionally, it gave us the chance to highlight the specifics of LSN solutions that can be configured in a matter of hours to the specifics of any brand or business application," he said. "Voting can be used in many other circumstances, from in-venue sporting events and music concerts to corporate applications to television programs."

Obama captured 56.2 percent of the CTIA vote, which was conducted September 10-12.

LSN and mBlox claim that the database of participants will not be used in any way.

"LSN and mBlox respect the privacy of all participants and we follow all the MMA best practice guidelines to ensure mobile subscribers have a positive interaction and the industry continues to grow," Mr. Cegielski said.

mBlox claims to be the world's largest mobile transaction network, with mobile subscribers on more than 500 carriers in 180 countries. The company specializes in mobile billing and message transmission.

According to Nielson Mobile, 116 million Americans actively use text messaging on a daily basis.

Text messaging has already played an important role in the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama.

Obama's text message announcing his vice presidential candidate selection of Joe Biden reached approximately 2.9 million subscribers, many of whom signed up with the promise of receiving vital information via text messaging on their mobile phone.

In addition to the 2VOTE short code, LSN has additional short codes provisioned through mBlox to provide other applications to the marketplace.

By simply the keywords, these short codes are ready to go for any brand wanting to launch a mobile campaign with these particular activities: TXT4FUN with the WINIT short code, TXT4SPORTS with the SCORE short code and TXT4SAVINGS with the 4ACAR short code.

"The strategy of the campaign was to allow CTIA attendees to vote for their favorite candidate through SMS," said Lee Durham, president of LSN, Atlanta, GA. "A screen was set up at the mBlox booth that provided immediate results."

LSN claims that its Local Wireless division delivers the largest single source network of local content to wireless carriers, covering more than 200 million subscribers, while enabling local media properties to integrate their wireless initiatives.

LSN's Mobile Advertising and Mobile Direct Marketing divisions deliver and manage local and national direct mobile marketing programs for large brands and local advertisers.
LSN's GowithSMS provides turnkey mobile programs.

LSN technology also enables local media affiliates to track live weather coverage, including animated radar with zoom-by-zip-code capability, making this information available on subscribers' mobile handset.

With the approach of Hurricane Ike this past weekend, LSN hit an all-time record number of page views: 3.4 million on Saturday alone, as well as sending its largest number of text alerts.

LSN sent a total of 321,984 text messages from Friday 9/12 through Sunday 9/14.
Information downloaded included breaking weather, local weather radar, news, shelter information and Red Cross.

Other parts of the U.S. lost power due to the hurricane-force winds and experienced usage spikes for page views as well.

For example, Louisville, KY, lost power on Sunday and the local media affiliate recorded almost 80,000 page views. A week ago, Louisville had 9,400 page views.

Local affiliate hurricane information was provided to local residents via non-subscription mobile Internet at http://www.localwireless.com/wap/stations/?sid=25, SMS alerts and mobile video clips.

The LSN mobile Internet site is available on 17 carrier decks, SMS is available on all capable handsets and video is a streaming program available on all devices that have video players.

The service is completely ad-supported.

"Past brands include McDonald's, Ford, GM, Papa John's, MSN and numerous others," Mr. Durham said.