Another Election-Night Winner: Text Messaging

November 6, 2008  

Text messaging surged Tuesday night after media outlets called the presidential race for Sen. Barack Obama, according to wireless-services providers.

AT&T said that text traffic jumped 44% in the hour following the announcement, the biggest spike in its history. The messages-per-second volume was even greater than New Year’s Eve, a traditionally heavy texting day. Mobile-services firm Sybase 365 was even more precise, reporting that from 11:00 p.m. to 11:10 p.m. EST, message volume tripled from the usual volume at that time.

More than 1.25 billion text messages crossed Verizon Wireless’s network Tuesday, a 21% increase from what the company typically sees that day of the week. Photo and video traffic was up 10%.

Were blue-staters texting more? Sprint’s data shows that while its nationwide SMS traffic climbed 21%, compared with average traffic on the previous four Tuesdays, it shot up even more in Democratic enclaves. It was up 106% in San Francisco, 45% in Oakland, Calif., 42% in the Washington, D.C. metro area, and 26% in the New York metro area.

The Obama campaign has tapped into the texting trend before, using SMS messages in August to announce Sen. Joe Biden as his vice-presidential pick (although not everyone got the message).

- Andrew LaVallee