President E-Text
5:25 PM -- Here's an interesting little stat to chew on from RealNetworks Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK): It processed 35 times more text traffic on the day that Obama was sworn in than it did during the previous inauguration.
The company says it processed "more than 890 million text messages" on Tuesday, setting a new record for the event -- so many, in fact, that text traffic overwhelmed some networks in the D.C. area.
In contrast, on Inauguration Day in 2005, the number of SMS messages processed by RealNetworks was only 25 million.
This demonstrates "how widely the U.S. has embraced text messaging in the last four years," Real suggests.
Pretty interesting, when you consider this is really the ground floor of what can be done with current and coming smartphones. It'll be revealing to see how much SMS -- and video traffic -- will be sent in 2012, to clarify whether this user trend is really on the climb or whether Inauguration Day 2009 was a one-off.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung
The company says it processed "more than 890 million text messages" on Tuesday, setting a new record for the event -- so many, in fact, that text traffic overwhelmed some networks in the D.C. area.
In contrast, on Inauguration Day in 2005, the number of SMS messages processed by RealNetworks was only 25 million.
This demonstrates "how widely the U.S. has embraced text messaging in the last four years," Real suggests.
Pretty interesting, when you consider this is really the ground floor of what can be done with current and coming smartphones. It'll be revealing to see how much SMS -- and video traffic -- will be sent in 2012, to clarify whether this user trend is really on the climb or whether Inauguration Day 2009 was a one-off.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung
