RSSMany Obama supporters never received 3am VP wake-up text
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published August 25, 2008, 12:30 PM
"Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee," read the Obama campaign's early morning SMS message to his supporters. Trouble was, even by that time, many already knew it, and some weren't even getting the message.
The original plan was for Barack Obama supporters nationwide to be the first to receive the news of his vice presidential running mate. But well over two hours before many of those supporters received what ended up being, perhaps in an inadvertent tribute to Hillary Clinton, a 3am EDT wake-up call on August 25, CNN correspondent John King was the first to go live with the news that two highly-placed, then anonymous sources within the Democratic Party had confirmed to him that Joseph Biden was Sen. Obama's choice.
"[I] am happy with Senator Biden joining our team. I am not happy with the way Team Obama handled making this announcement," wrote one commenter named Barbara on Barack Obama's presidential blog Saturday. "I did receive my text at 3 am while I was sleeping this morning. All week I worked with the cell phone out on my desk...How disappointing is this to go to sleep and have my boyfriend who did not sign up for the text, call me at 5:30 with the news in full blast on the TV!"
As another commenter named Katie wrote, "The text messaging gimmick has me miffed. The campaign gets this one free pass, but don't use your supporters again to control the news cycle. A message in the 'wee hours of Saturday morning' -- lame. I expect better going forward."
Earlier, Obama supporters had been told to expect the announcement at 8:00 am EDT, on the morning prior to the presumptive nominee's first joint appearance with his VP choice -- which was already well known to be Saturday.
But what Obama supporters may not have expected was that the text message promise would end up as the equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet for traditional reporters. Rather than see thousands of political junkies turn to the telephone for their news, TV media outlets in particular ended up camping out in front of the private residences of Sen. Biden, Gov. Tim Kaine (Va.) and Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.). As midnight approached, the circumstantial evidence was gathering. ABC News' Jake Tapper reported that Secret Service agents had arrived at Biden's home, and no such motorcades adorned Gov. Kaine's or Sen. Bayh's residences.
What CNN's Larry King wondered was why a scoop, if there was to be one, wouldn't have lasted only a mere few seconds. As he asked correspondent Candy Crowley late Friday night, as "speculation" was either being continued or convincingly feigned, "Help me with the text message thing. Let's hear the first person. Let's call him Oscar. Oscar, tomorrow morning, at ten after six, gets a text message. Why doesn't he just call CNN and tell them who the vice presidential nominee is?"
Holding her own phone up, Crowley responded, "Well, because, you know, he won't need to because all of us have signed up for the text message."
An undisclosed number of persons signed up over their phones to receive the early word on Obama's choice by dialing the "short code" number 62262. On August 10, the day the campaign stated it would unveil its decision by text message, traffic on Sprint's "Now" Short Code network jumped to 75% above normal, according to a statement this morning. Traffic peaked again to 175% above normal four days later, when the campaign used that channel to announce it had heard from its two millionth donor.
But when the Biden announcement was made, Sprint Now traffic jumped well over 250% over normal, probably providing a welcome short-term revenue boost.
Yet not all 62262 subscribers even received their messages at all, including BetaNews' own Nate Mook. "I did get confirmation that I would be sent the message after I submitted my text initially," Nate told us this morning. "And I received another text in between asking me to sign up for notices about local events. So I was definitely on their list. The Biden text just never arrived."
Twitter users also posted their disappointment. GinnyRed57 described herself this way: "is pining for her text message from Obama. Biden my time, in fact."
Freelance writer Steven Leckart's Twitter feed was directed toward Sen. Obama's: "@barackobama, i did not get a text message re: joe biden. i had to find out on cnn.com. so much for circumventing mainstream media, barry."
Hundreds of similar messages were posted to Twitter on Saturday from people who never received their text message from Obama.
One Daily Kos blogger also didn't get the call. "Verizon Wireless never sent me the VP text message from the Obama campaign this morning," wrote jatkin02. "This disappointed me, of course, because I'm a political junkie and signed up for delivery within minutes of the campaign's first announcement of the event."
Jatkin02 went on to cast suspicion both on the campaign's text message distributor -- Distributive Networks, which has already won awards such as the coveted "Golden Dot" for how it's handled the Obama campaign -- and on Verizon Wireless, the blogger's carrier. However, responses to the post indicate that both Verizon and Sprint subscribers were among those who didn't get awakened early Saturday morning.
Sen. Obama's campaign had not issued a statement regarding missed texts, as of early Monday afternoon.
Meanwhile, the Wonkette blog had already reported that it could be an easy affair for a spoofer to send a false text message on behalf of the Obama campaign ("Barack has chosen Richard Lugar as his running mate..."), and sign it with the response address of 62262. The suggestion was accompanied by a picture of unwilling Obama representative Paris Hilton, and categorized as a type of low-grade hack using a term we simply can't repeat here.
One responder said he or she already sent out messages suggesting that Obama had chosen former Vice President Walter Mondale.
Obama has no plans of truly leaving Iraq he wants to leave all the bases and embassies over there. How many US soldiers will be their indefinitely? 60,000. If we're done occupying Iraq then we should leave, completely. Since the embassy we have there is the world's largest we should leave it behind as a gift to the Iraq's new government. Otherwise, it will remain a symbol of American power and oppression like it is today.
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|http://www.wcpo.com/news...-40e7-ab15-3d963c0a451d
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|Nice excuse to post more crap for the first term Senator that has spent most of that time running for Pres. I wouldn't vote for him if he were that last man on the planet. I truly hope that no one on BN is stupid enough to vote for him, either.
Opps, I forgot we do have some Mac/Apple lovers here, so I guess we do have a few that will vote for him.
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|Actualy, this is Scott's audition to become not just a hack writer for Betanews but a super-duper hack writer for people Mag. He takes his inspiration from Obama, "Yes, I can be a writer for People Mag."
Have a nice day:) and good luck Scott:)
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|Still having a problem with the "Post a Reply" button, eh?
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|am I the only one that can see how jr high osoma has been in his little text plan? do you left wing terrorists really want to elect a terrorist like him? wake up hippies!
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|Technical glitch. But what can one do when the media ended up with the news first. I got the text about 2:35am and the email an hour later. (CST time) I'd known of course by 11:40pm cst with the CNN popup program I have. and shortly there after the MSNBC alert popped up.
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|CNN was the news station that was going to break the story of Obama's VP pick before the text messages was to be sent out to Obama's supporters. The Obama campaign wanted to make sure that his supporters received the text before the media release the news, and in their haste it didn't work out like plan. CNN was going to break the story before the texts was release, but was the one who was quick to criticize why it didn't work.
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|This is on Beta news? Wtf...
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|Why not?
We get endless stories of poor dweebs distraught over having to wait for several hours to get their iPhones and reports of slow 3G service - why not the failure of such an astute advocate of change - well not really change, as technical failure is anything but rare...just as empty platitudes promising change are anything new.
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|Anyone who cant wait a few more hours when they would normally wake up for school or work and must know in the middle of the night has some issues.
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|Hey, they were already awake worrying about their delayed iPhone service...
;-)
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|Then they didn't miss anything.
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|Who really cares. Either way, its doing what they probably intended in the first place - lots and lots of free publicity.
All it seems that we've heard about lately is Obama, Obama, Obama..
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|For the record the mention on Betanews is not free publicity. Obama is an advertiser on Betanews, haven't you seen his banners? No, joke.
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|Nice post there douche bag hopefully the secret service will come knocking on your door soon. You are a real class act there. Have to admit though your name is very fitting
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|I guess he'll have to increase tax to fix the system.
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|He's practically a socialist, he was already raising taxes anyway. What's another few dollars per taxpayer?
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|practically you are being nice.
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|Middle America doesn't give a crap.
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|But did you get the text message?
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|I never got my text message, ergo Obama can't plan sending a text message So I am voting for McCain ... Obama why would you plan a stunt that you can't pull off?
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|Isn't it the job a presidential candidate to promise things that they can't deliver?
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|I received mine, I was asleep when I got it, but I got it nonetheless.
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|Not the most elegantly executed announcement, but with something as big as the VP candidate it doesn't really matter. They gets ample, continuing coverage no matter what.
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|Obama really screwed the pooch on how this whole VP announcement was handled.
1) If there's one thing everyone in the media knows, it is that you do not try to make news on a weekend. So the fact that the text message wasn't sent out before the morning national news shows ("The Early Show", "The Today Show", "Good Morning America") began at 7am ET on Friday was a colossal mistake.
2) This is one of the most traveled weeks of the summer (if not THE most traveled week). So by waiting until Saturday, Obama potentially lost out on a lot of the buzz he could have generated with a much larger audience, had so many people not been on vacation. [And let's not forget, why would the Democrats pick this busy vacation week for their convention in the first place?]
3) 3AM? Are you serious? You're going to annoy a couple million of your supporters by waking them at 3AM to announce this? And didn't Hillary already own the whole 3AM thing from her ad bashing Obama earlier this year?
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|"3) 3AM? Are you serious? You're going to annoy a couple million of your supporters by waking them at 3AM to announce this? And didn't Hillary already own the whole 3AM thing from her ad bashing Obama earlier this year?"
The plan was to send the text message at 8am, but those plans got ruined when CNN somehow learned of the story and leaked it shortly after midnight. Once the story was leaked, the campaign had to send out the message before the news story broke out (which would have made an 8am text just dumb).
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|Yes, better to annoy your supporters and at the same time make everyone remember the whole 3AM Hillary ad, than to be scooped by CNN! Clearly someone on their media/PR team needs to be fired.
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|Yes...CLEARLY. Obviously you should be running the campaign, you CLEARLY know better then anybody else!
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|I asked for my donation back after Barack passed Telecom immunity. And he gave it. And no way in hell would I accept getting a TM from any entity other than friends/family.
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|Maybe he was just too embarrassed fessing to the tech savvy youth about nominating the most hard-core anti-piracy lobbyist he could find as running mate.
That should even get him Tool's vote! :)
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|Yeah...I got the "news" around midnight and then got repeatedly woken up between 3am and 4am by SMS spam announcing what I already knew. Since I was on-call for a work situation, I couldn't even just turn off my phone. So much for the 8am "day before" message.
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