B Obama's win makes 4 huge txt msg spike

The real winner on Nov. 4 wasn't Barack Obama. It was the cellphone industry.

Text messaging spiked on election night, service providers say, with AT&T reporting a 44% surge in traffic. That's the largest increase in text messaging in the company's history, according to Alana Semuels, who writes for The Times' Technology blog.

Semuels says Sprint saw a 30% increase in text messages in L.A. County between 7 and 9 p.m. on election night.

So, who was doing all that texting?

Earlier on election day, Obama's campaign (which is known for its technological savvy) sent out waves of text messages to supporters, urging voters to the polls.

But the evening spike was probably just people celebrating -- or commiserating -- as the returns rolled in.

-- Kate Linthicum

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Photo credit: Barack Obama holds his BlackBerry before a conference call with supporters (Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)