We’re introducing a major infrastructure upgrade for all US-based customers. Although international usage is growing like a weed and we’re looking to establish new services abroad, the US service always had one major drawback.

Before today, you (and your audience) had to prefix any text message responses to polls with the word “CAST” and a space. While effective, this was a sub-optimal user experience. Now, with a new shortcode powering our US-based customers, “CAST” and a space is no longer necessary. All participants have to do is text in their keyword as their message and they’re off and running. That means no more head-scratching confusion for newcomers thinking to themselves, “So, is that with CAST or without? Does it need to be in all-caps?” We’ve made our inexpensive audience response system better because you and your audience won’t have to think as much about how to participate.  As a result, the 41411 will become 99503. Users will be migrated over the coming weeks, starting with paid customers. Responses sent to either 41411 or 99503 will work for all polls during the transition, it’s just a matter of what’s displayed on-screen.

Also, we never announced it, but you may have noticed that the SMS-replies have been ad-free for quite some time.

We have several more new improvements coming, some of which you may have already noticed but I’ll remain silent about them until we consider them “official.” And all this just in time for Christmas. Please don’t just take our word for it, go ahead and enjoy the new experience yourself. If you already have an account with us, just sign in and change your text message area to the United States. If you don’t have an account with us, you can sign up for free.