// Pocket Picks //

US presidential candidate Barack Obama has already shown himself to be pretty mobile-savvy, launching a dedicated WAP site for his campaign. Last week, he built on that by revealing his choice of Joe Biden as his VP running-mate in a text message sent out to supporters. Nielsen Mobile reckons 2.9 million people got the message, which was sent on Friday, making it the biggest mobile marketing event ever. The shine was slightly taken off it by the fact that the news leaked to various traditional news organisations and websites before the texts were sent, but still, it’s some achievement. There’s been speculation that the campaign may have cost Obama $290,000 if he paid ten cents per message, although that’s a pretty big assumption, given the existence of numerous firms flogging bulk-SMS campaigns for this sort of thing. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how Obama uses mobile during the rest of his campaign.