LineScout TM successfully launched on St. Patrick's Day, March 17,
2009. Because bar patrons in East Lansing wanted to know how many people were
waiting in line at their favorite bars while out on the town, they were able to
contact LineScout TM and get that information.
Here is how it works: LineScout TM offers a free service to all bar patrons in East
Lansing via text messages, stating the number of people in line at eight
different bars in East Lansing. LineScout TM updates every 10 minutes and can indicate up to 99
people in line! Bar patrons get this information by sending a KEYWORD to a
5-digit telephone number in order to receive the latest updated message from
LineScoutTM. The KEYWORD is a one-word description of a business or service,
sent
to a 5-digit number known as a Common Short Code (41411).
The
text message sent to bar patrons is a SMS text message and is the standard
across all wireless providers. LineScout TM is as easy as texting a friend. The patron creates a
new text message and places 41411 in the To: box. Then, they type “LineScout”
in the body of the message and press send. Once the text message is sent,
patrons have to wait less than 30 seconds to receive their requested message. Patrons
receive a 160 character text message naming all 8 bars and the number of people
in line at each.
LineScout TM offers
services from 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM, Wednesday through Saturday each week. Thus far, over 1500 people have requested 11,000+ messages from LineScout TM since St. Patrick's Day. The
response has been enormous and better than expected. A good example was the week of May 4th,
graduation week at M.S.U.: 1234 messages were requested by 600+ bar patrons in
four days. LineScout TM received an
average of 77 message requests each hour. At the peak hour of 11:00 PM
Saturday, LineScout TM answered 150 text message requests.
updated 2/2/10