I'm kind of disgruntled right now with the Obama VP e-mail and text message campaign.  It now seems like a bait and switch scheme to me.

For the last couple of weeks, the political world was abuzz with excitement about whom presumptive (at least for the next couple of days) Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama would select as his running mate.  In a rather smart move, the Obama campaign announced that it would send the news first to its supporters who signed up for e-mail and text message updates.  This encouraged plenty of people to sign up in hopes of getting the announcement before the news broke.

Well, that's not how it really rolled out.  The campaign announced that Obama selected Senator Joe Biden as his choice of Vice President late Friday night/early Saturday morning.  I was up late watching the news coverage of this announcement, but I still had yet to receive my e-mail or text message.  Wasn't I suppose to get the news first?

Let me note that I understand that sending e-mails and text messages to a vast crowd can take some time to complete.  That's the trickle.  In fact, I expected that, but did the campaign and all those who signed up recognize that fact?  Did this delayed release annoy some people?  Maybe that's why the campaign sent this news when many people were either sleeping (particularly those of us in the Eastern Time Zone), drinking, or partying.  We could find out later in the morning after we got some sleep.

Now that the news is out and the Democratic Party is at its convention, it is time for the Obama deluge.  When I signed up for the text message and e-mail list to learn about Obama's veep stakes pick, I simply wanted to get the VP announcement.  However, I've gotten several e-mails from the campaign since the news broke.  Biden sent me a video.  Michelle Obama shared some behind the scenes moments from Denver.  Etc. 

Wait a second!  I didn't sign up for more e-mails.  This is something I didn't expect.  I would think that a campaign savvy enough to collect a massive contact list would understand better than to bombard people who agreed only to receive a single message.  The campaign should have created a separate list for this one-time use.  Hopefully, I won't continue to get more e-mails after the convention. 

At least so far I’ve only got one text message…  The one I wanted.  

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