Obama's VP text message reached 2.9 million people

The Obama campaign's highly anticipated text message announcing Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee's running mate reached 2.9 million U.S. mobile subscribers last weekend, making it "one of the most important text messages" ever and "one of the most successful" branding efforts using mobile devices, according to Nic Covey, director of insights for research firm Nielsen Mobile. Covey bestowed those superlatives despite some major problems with the Obama text message initiative, which promised people who signed up that they'd be the first to know the news. It didn't quite work out that way. Major news organizations broke the news late Friday night that Obama had chosen his Senate colleague, Biden. That forced the campaign to send out the text messages about five hours earlier than they had planned -- at about 3 a.m. EDT Saturday (midnight Pacific Time), when most supporters probably were sound asleep.