SMS was extensively used to reach thousands of people and encourage them to gather for the huge protests in Spain the other day.

“It was a political extension of the phenomenon nicknamed “smart mobs” by American author Howard Reingold – and it’s happened before. In the Philippines, text messages helped whip up public opinion and led to widespread protests, which ended in the eventual toppling of the president, Joseph Estrada, in 2001. The day after suffering their own impromptu smart mobs, the Spanish government was defeated at the polls. “

Indeed, it’s widely believed the protests had a major impact on the election result, and thus SMS can share part of the credit for the outcome.