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As our Doug Berger posted on earlier this month, presidential candidate Barack Obama offered to send you a text message with his VP choice.  You’d be among the first to know, as Obama was leaking this info to you first, instead of the talking heads over at CNN and the like.

So how many gave away their phone number? It is estimated 2.9 million parted ways with that morsel of data.  Shocked?  Astounded?  Me too.  And not just with Obama’s choice of running mates.

Nielsen Mobile makes this estimate and calls it the biggest mobile marketing campaign ever.  So far.

Since younger voters tend to skew toward the ranks of the non-voters, bringing this group to the table could prove huge come this December. Brian McConnell over at Gigom wrote up a thoughtful post on the far reaching effects of thinking outside the networks:

  * Conduct non-intrusive surveys (e.g. are you registered to vote yet? what zip code are you in?)
  * On a state-by-state basis, send reminder messages about the cutoff dates for voter registration and link to registration forms
  * On a state-by-state basis, tell people to mail in their ballots to vote absentee
  * Invite people to campaign events in their area code
  * Remind people to get out and vote on Election Day (believe it or not, some people forget, although you’d need to be hiding in a cave to miss this one)
  * Promote down-ballot candidates on a zipcode-by-zipcode basis

Personally, I think it is great the pols are finding ways to engage the voters.  Educated voters (on topics, not necessarily schooling) make informed choices and that has to be better than the alternative.

Read [gigaom]