Text Messaging Opportunities

The good news: 36 million Americans use text messaging.  The understandable caveat: most are 18-27.

Shel Holtz discusses implications for the PR industry broadly, but does text messaging have a future in politics?  Could it be a way to engage younger voters with issue alerts?  Or is it an Inside-the-Beltway pro tool that might work for lobbyists to be updated on key news tidbits?  Or is it a technology ill-suited to politics and advocacy needs?

Perhaps text messages could be employed by an advocacy group to flood congressional phone lines on a moment's notice.  But the 18-27 year old set isn't the one most often associated with such activism.  Are there enough older users to make it worthwhile?  Or can some group take advantage of the younger constituency?

Lots of questions at this point, but nobody has yet solved the riddle.