| The
Guardian
More
than 15 000 people entered the text message poetry competitions
we designed for the Guardian in 2001 and 2002.
All
the entries were sent in by text message, then whittled down to
a shortlist of seven and sent back by text to everyone who entered,
one poem per day for seven days, and they scored that day's poem
between 1 and 10 and sent the score to the Guardian by text.
The
competition showed how strongly creativity can engage people, and
how a community can be built using everyday mobile technology.
The
Guardian's text message poetry competition was one of the events
that taught the mainstream media how to use text messaging, and
remains one of the richest and most creative examples of how the
media can harness “user generated content” to make its audience
feel part of a community.
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