Recently YouthNoise and Virgin Mobile launched a mobile campaign designed to raise awareness of teen homelessness in other teens in the United States. The campaign – called Ghost Town – takes a unique twist on more typical SMS campaigns. It gets its message out through an SMS story sent in regular installments over a month.
Teens can subscribe to the story by texting GHOST to the short code 1234. After that they’ll receive a chapter of the story in a 160 character text message twice a day for a month. Sounds like a mobile soap opera, doesn’t it?
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Citizen journalism has been hitting the news lately, accelerated by the use of mobiles and blogging during the latest events in the Middle East. Something which has been around for some time is starting to become more and more mainstream by the day. Sadly, most seems to be centred around world trouble spots, but therein lies it's strength.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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 .
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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.
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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.
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The UN World Food Programme recently received a different kind of text message – a direct plea for help from a refugee in northern Kenya. The message said, “My name is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilogrammes of food. You must help.”
In an article from the UN Refugee Agency about the SMS, reporter Greg Barrow asks what the impact would be if in addition to giving refugees food, the World Food Programme also gave them a few mobile phones and the numbers of all star donors like Bono and Bill Gates. Mohammed’s text message has been making the rounds in the international press so I don’t doubt that similar messages could draw further attention to problems in refugee camps. But I think a greater impact could be made if an organization, like the One Campaign for example, sought out SMS messages like Mohammed’s from people in refugee camps in need of urgent help and sent them to their network. I bet many people who receive such a personal message will want to help, and if they can help by making a small donation from their mobile phone or sending the sms message on to their political representatives, it could spur action to help alleviate problems such as Mohammed’s.
You can read the entire UNHCR article here.
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In the latest edition in m-trends’ series on women in mobile, Rudy de Waele features Trixie Concepcion from TXT Power and Mobile Active. Trixie played a key role in spreading the infamous Hello Garci ringtone throughout the Philippines and helped make it the most well known political ringtone in the world. It's a great interview that you can't miss. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
While some of us are working and wondering what’s going to be the next new business model or next killer application in mobile technology, other people in different parts of the world are using the mobile phone to fight injustice. Trixie Concepcion of TXTPower, the group that popularized the Hello Garci protest ringtones in the Fillipines, is one of them. I think it’s essential for m-trends.org readers to know a bit more about her and her activities.
You can read the whole piece over at
m-trends.
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