Labour's Brown needed to text, not meet and greet

AS WE GO to the voting booth today, some are wondering why more hasn't been made of mobile phones, rather than having pamphlets shoved in your face and hearing about Gordon Brown getting into situations where he got upset by little old ladies.

Jay Seaton of mobile messaging company Airwide was obviously trying to get some coverage around the General Election when he said this, but he did have a point when he said that President Obama and the Democrats made much more of mobile technology during last year's election in the US.

He said, "This was a missed opportunity for the political parties in the UK. You just have to look at the success Obama had with SMS in his Presidential campaign to see that."

Obama also had a mobile page that had downloads of ringtones and wallpaper, and let supporters sign up for Twitter feeds. At some point he even got an Iphone app.

It seems that Twitter and social networks might have galvanised more people to vote this year, but as for actual campaigning the political parties haven't seemed to have fully gotten their brains wrapped around technology properly to make it work like it can, although they have tried a few things on the web.

Certainly it would have made sense for parties to reach out to more voters through mobile phones using texts, as many people still aren't necessarily technology savvy enough to access the Internet on their mobiles. µ