Live8 Tickets Sold by Text

[Steve]

You will have no doubt heard about Live8, announced officially by Bob Geldoff and friends last week. It is reminiscent of Live Aid held 20 years ago, but aims to be more than Live Aid; a Long Walk To Justice.

This is without doubt a moment in history where ordinary people can grasp the chance to achieve something truly monumental and demand from the 8 world leaders at G8 an end to poverty.

For Live8, there is more technology at the fingertips of the organisers, which can be used to reach even more people than before, starting already with the ticket booking service for the Live8 concert in Hyde Park, London. The Register reports on the huge volume of SMS messages received by O2 from music lovers after tickets.

On current numbers, organisers of the poverty awareness concert predict they will have received up to 1.5m texts by midnight tonight.

In a statement issued this afternoon organisers said: "All of the systems were able to meet the demand and at its peak we received a total of 611 messages per second."

The concerts will even be broadcast on the Internet by AOL, hopefully in a nice standardised format. Still, the more ways people get involved in Live8, the better.

[Norky]

I'd rather watch it on TV. There are a lot of crappy acts that these poor people are going to have to sit through, and some crappy public transport to endure!