AT&T has revealed Tuesday’s election fever prompted the biggest spike in text messaging in the company’s history. It’s further evidence of how the momentous occasion highlighted modern communication technologies.

As we’ve reported this week, news websites (including CNN) achieved their highest ever traffic levels on Tuesday night. That was particularly notable because most previous spikes had come during working hours when people were likely using office rather than home computers.

Traditional media didn’t miss out on the surge either: major newspapers increased circulation and still sold out, with some who missed out bidding three-figure sums on eBay for a copy. And television audiences for election coverage peaked at 71 million, also a record.

Now AT&T has reported the number of text messages sent on election day was 44 percent higher than the average of the five previous days. It wasn’t necessarily a record number of messages (the firm didn’t reveal raw figures), but was the biggest such jump in numbers. The increase topped traditional spikes such as Valentine’s Day (a 33 percent spike last time), Christmas (30 percent) and New Year’s Eve (26 percent).

The Los Angeles Times reports the AT&T figures aren’t isolated. Sybase 365, which handles many of the text messages sent from one network to another, says the number of messages sent in the 10 minutes after TV stations projected Barack Obama as the winner was three times the usual level for that time of night.

Of course, text messaging played a key role in the campaigns this year, with Obama announcing his choice of Joe Biden as running mate through a message to supporters who’d registered their numbers, and the National Republican College Committee experimenting with texts to McCain supporters in colleges.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the Obama campaign’s database of supporters’ cellphone numbers now the race is over. In theory, it’s an extremely valuable database, though some might question whether it will be appropriate to continue using a party-political ‘mailing list’ once Obama is head of the Executive.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 at 3:43 pm under Cell phones, Internet, Politics.

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