A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.
This summer while thousands of music lovers converge onto Lollapalooza this week in Chicago to listen to their favorite artists sing their favorite tunes they will also get to lend a helping hand to the National Reseource Defence Council's mission to Move America Beyond Oil. And the technology to do so is all in the palm of their hand.
The NRDC Action fund will be there among the crowds, getting out the word to young music fans that they can use their cell phones to the send the text message "MABO" (Move America Beyond Oil) to a designated short code. The SMS drive will help the NRDC compile voluntary phone numbers for eventual follow up's and mobilization efforts with those actvists wanting to get involved with the cause and enlist their support for an eventual MABO petition which aims to lobby for specific policies aimed at reducing US oil dependence.
As the power of the teenager and the text message is becoming more and more evident, some political campaigns and non-profits are betting that this new hip mobile technology can change American politics as well, as it has already proven to do so throughout the world. This, at least, is the gist of a Newsweek article published titled "Vote 4 Me."
The major point of the article is asking whether a teen trend can be "turned into a weapon of choice for politicos hoping to energize their constituents? Some strategists are betting it can: Where 2004 saw the great blog campaign, we are likely to be talking about the great text-messaging campaign of 2008, says Joe Trippi, who, as Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign manager, was a pioneer in the use of the Internet as a fundraising and organizing tool. The technology is right on the cusp of becoming very big.
The news from MobileVoter just keeps comming. Ben Rigby have been working like mad and are today launching their TxtVoter Run Your Own Campaign tool.
Simply put TxtVoter allows individuals & organizations to reserve their own keywords which tie idirectly into MobileVoters very own voter registration system. Ultimely this allows anyone to create their own SMS Mobile Voter registration drive.
After that all you have to do is tell your target voters to text [your keyword] to 75444. After that the MobileVoter registation system kicks in. But of course you will also be able to send customized texts and online postcards.
The guys over at MobileVoter have even gone as far to provide tools that allow individual or organizations to create customizable PDF templates that feature the user's keywords - so that, for example, users can print out materials to promote their voter registration drive
Voto Latino, a non-partisan youth voter registration organization aimed at Latino youths has teamed up with Mobile Voter, a San Francisco non-profit dedicated to harnessing the power of text messaging and mobile technology to drive youth oriented voter registration. Apparently, the Latino group was so impressed by the way in which young Hispanics used text messages and SMS to rally at immigration protests this spring that they have made it their goal to sign up at least 35,000 Hispanic youths nationwide using Mobile Voter's SMS services .
For those of you heavy readers in the mobile blogosphere you probably have already come across the news of Secret Deodorant#039s mobile campaign here in New York City in honor of the companies fiftieth anniversary which was yesterday.
In these days of failing MVNO results one MVNO here in the States, Boost Mobile (a lifestyle-based youth brand this is a subsidiary of Sprint Nextel Corporation) is trying to give itself a boost while boosting the hope of teenagers (their target consumers) around the country. In what appears to involve no other mobile marketing campaign other then the name "Boost Mobile" appearing in the billboards, the MVNO has teamed up with the RockCorps volunteerism program to teach Americas youth about the power of volunteering and community caring.
Who would not want to save this guy?
As the seal hunting season opens, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is launching a major campaign at stopthesealhunt.com and on cell phones all across the UK.
Starting yesterday, IFAW launched advertisements, like the one showed above, in the Sunday Mirror and has already received well over 10, 000 responses which, according to Jed Alpert, CEO of Politxt (the political arm of his Rights-Group media) the company responsible for the back end technology of the campaign, is a very sizeable response rate for a newspaper ad. IFAW will be displaying the add in various UK newspapers throughout the week and will be putting them up in the London tube some time in early April. In the UK, send the text message "Ban It" to the short code 60123.
More on the story is at Personal Democracy.
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