Revolution Messaging

Revolution Messaging's "Mobilize" platform is a mobile messaging system that allows clients to reach their constituents on their mobile phones. Through the platform, clients can send out text message blasts, set up interactive voice menus where constituents can take polls and surveys, get information (like the location of their polling place, for example), or record their own messages. The text-message platform is interactive, meaning it's designed to allow you to program a back-and-forth with constituents: Prompting them to "guns" if they care about gun control, for example, or "health" for health care, and based on their responses, place them into list segments for future issues-based campaigns. Goodstein's team has also taken steps to allow the platform to field misspellings in user input, and Mobilize can send reply messages to specific constituents.

Mobilize can do interactive voice, and Goodstein says he has built click-to-call tools before, which allow constituents to put in their phone number, have the system find their member of Congress based on that number, and connect them to that congressional office. Mobilize can display information on mobile web browsers, and allows users to send their contact information to a campaign via mobile web to connect the campaign's mobile and online presences.

Goodstein and some of the other people who are developing mobile technology all seem to know each other and talk to each other from time to time. Combine that with the inherently competitive nature of the technology sector they're in, and it's no surprise that many of these features have become de-facto standards: As each of the leading firms sees or hears about features added by their competitors, they race to add the same functionality. Neither Goodstein nor any of the other mobile messaging leaders we spoke to for this guide — such as Jed Alpert of Mobile Commons and Alison Bishop at Distributive Networks — really want their products defined by what they have that their competition does or doesn't, but the fact is that these three platforms have pretty similar capabilities, and most of the features of Revolution Messaging's platform are also features of the other two. (Goodstein, who developed some of those while on the Obama campaign trail, would quietly point out that he thought of many of them first.)

The difference comes out in strategy and in the more cutting-edge work like the mobile web and mobile apps.

Goodstein seemed more interested in having clients associate Revolution Messaging with expertise than with specific technology, perhaps because, as he says, the company buys up technologies it likes, and technology is changing all the time. Being the former external online director of Barack Obama's campaign, he also has a certain cachet as a strategist and consultant.

"Some clients may need heavy SMS, some clients may need mobile applications that are custom built," Goodstein says. Revolution Messaging will do both, or something else entirely, depending on the strategy.

The point for Goodstein is the message, and how technology can help a candidate spread that message. Looking forward, Goodstein predicts that more and more people will start to better understand mobile video, and the ability to consume it on your phone will become less and less expensive. That, he said, is one of Revolution Messaging's current areas of focus — along with capitalizing on smartphone capabilities in general.

"I think that you're going to see Samsung and LG and all of these sort of usual suspects, folks that get into technology to make it cheaper and more adaptable to mass consumers," starting to put real smartphones in the hands of people who can't or won't buy an iPhone or a Nexus One, says Goodstein.

"[The] Samsung JET is a pretty amazing device," Goodstein says.