OMG Big Trbl. Text Alerts for Campus

Text messages aren't just our favorite way to vote Sanjaya off of American Idol, they're also the quickest way to get in touch, no matter where we are. The mobile is always close at hand (and usually in the pocket) if we're at a concert, in class, or even in the cube toiling away on our TPS reports a text message won't likely go ignored for long. A number of US colleges and universities have been, or are looking into, using text messaging for emergency alerts. According to the Globe, following the events at Virginia Tech last week, Boston University may have a system of SMS alerts in place real soon.

Back in the days before the internets had become part of daily life it used to be radio announcements and listings on TV (even before the crawler at the bottom of the screen) the best way to find out about snow days and other cancellations and emergencies. With mp3 players replacing radio listening and Tivo pulling down television so we don't even have to watch the commercials new solutions for reaching the masses will need to be instituted. That's where the SMS services come in. With a couple of clicks on a web based system a blast can be sent to thousands of subscribers at once. Boston based MobileSphere put out a press release today that they'll begin offering an Emergency Broadcast Text Messaging system which could be just what schools like BU are looking for. A number of other commercial suppliers of the products already exist, the Globe reports that they've all been flooded with inquiries from campuses this last week.

The shortfall of the system is that it requires users to opt in for notifications, it'll also cost you. Not only will the schools, municipalities, and others need to pay to implement the service from the vendors, but the incoming text message fees from the cell phone carriers aren't likely to go away in the near future. Unlimited texting packages are available on most plans and when it comes down to it the $0.15 it costs isn't that much to pay for an important safety warning. Andy Carvin put up a short post yesterday that pretty well demonstrates the idea behind using text messaging in a new media world. At an NPR meeting the question was asked if anyone had heard about the breaking news that Boris Yeltsin had died. While a number of people had, no one had heard about it on the radio. Texting, emails and websites, and the bastard child of them all, Twitter, were likely to catch the attention of even those producing the content for the airwaves.

Image of an SMSer from Flickr user Fazen