Live Experimental Interactive Television

Shawn Van Every Shawn.Van.Every@nyu.edu
Spring 2010

Week 1 - SMS

SMS and Television

SMS or Short Message Service is a protocol for sending short messages from mobile phones to other mobile phones. Text messaging or texting is a very popular activity worldwide, coming in only second in usage to voice calling. Approximately 50% of users worldwide have used SMS.

Due to the popularity of SMS and people's comfort with it and the fact that it enjoys a very high level of interoperability between carriers, it has been used in a variety of contexts beyond individuals messaging each-other.

One big use of SMS is to interact with television programs:

Heroes Extras - trivia (plot/character), polls, "fun facts"
American Idol Voting - vote for winning contestant each week
Deal Or No Deal Mobile Sweepstakes

In general, SMS is very appealing to television producers as it can help keep viewers engaged and drive extra revenue (through premium SMS or deals with carriers).

SMS and Television: textually.org: SMS and Television
More about SMS: Wikipedia: Short message service

Next week we will look at programatically harnessing SMS for various purposes with a live program