SCHWARTZ CROSSROADS

Texting: What did the Obama Camp Really Get?

The news came down at 3am. Three million people signed up to be the first to find out Barak Obama's VP pick, they were going to get the news at the same time as ABC, NBC, The New York Times, the Associated Press and hundreds of other major news outlets. They were going to be "in the know" right when it happened.

But they were asleep. Worse, they were scooped.

A few hours before the text message went out I happened to be awake and reading some online news. The AP broke the story that Joe Biden had the slot at about 1am, based on an anonymous source. Pretty typical reporting.

What's more, the 3am timing, even as planned, meant that the Obama camp had a very traditional advantage: they were on the morning news, in the morning papers and controlled the "news cycle." Which begs the question: why do it?

The obvious first answer is that it makes the candidate look tech-savvy, something that is pretty important when trying to woo young voters against a Republican candidate who admits that he doesn't go online.

But I think that misses the point. The biggest thing the Democrats got out of this was a list of cell phone numbers and email addresses.The exact number isn't known, but it's as many as 3 million, sorted by zip code. The company that handled the process isn't giving out many specifics.

Considering that those elusive younger voters often don't get landlines, choosing instead to stick with a cell phone, means that the Democrats have contact with people who don't turn up in public directories. These are people not polled when the calls go out, asking "who are you likely to vote for in November?"

It means that these phone numbers can be called with fund raising requests and, more importantly, get-out-the-vote requests.

In 2004 I spent election night in a Newton living room using my own cell phone to call people in battleground states reminding them to get out and vote. Of course, those were public numbers. Now the Democrats have their own list to use. One that will reach a very young crowd.

As a side note, our own Ross Levanto is attending the Democratic National Convention and will be both blogging and tweeting from the event. I don't think he's planning to send out any text messages.

Posted by Chuck Tanowitz on August 25, 2008 at 9:15 PM