Love it or detest it , American Idol has at least one geeky claim to fame . It arguably was the major vehicle that introduced text messaging to much of the American public . AT&T says this season ’s show is even generating even more text - messaging votes than the whirl , with 80 % increase over last year ’s tally ( 13.5 million up from 7.5 million ) . It ’s also interesting to mark that the number of text edition messages increased intimately 700 percent from the first voting episode to the last . It ’s unknown if the decreasing number of balloting options appealed to those extra witness who could , in the last record - break-dance sequence , only count to two .
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