Text campaings don’t work during office hours and on long holidays
December 17, 2007 by Jayvee Fernandez
Filed under Cell phone, SMS, The Unwired Life, Unwired Oddities
Textually reports of the power of text messaging. You’ve probably heard of the coup attempt done about two weeks ago in the Philippines. It was broadcast all over BBC and CNN. Textually cites that the power of SMS can rally a huge mob in a matter of a 2 to 3 hours.
What happened? Had no one gotten the text messages? Were the two biggest telecom providers, Smart Communications and Globe, experiencing an SMS outage? Had the government blocked the messages from being delivered?
None of the above. The people leading the coup last month seemed to have made a big mistake: they did it during working hours.
One note though – the article mentions that the coup failed due to the time of SMS sending – rush hour. Actually it wasn’t really that. With the holidays approaching plus the fact that the coup plotters chose Thursday – which was the first day of the long weekend holiday for most of us – we had better things to do.
The “coup” failed because of many other things – Incompetence of the organizers and an administration used to dealing with coups to name a few. The first Edsa Revolt or coup happened without the help of text or sms message.