Smart Mobs dissects the Virgin "sin to win" promotion, concluding that the success of the promotion highlights "the desire for a high-tech solution to the guilt brought about by the deadly sins".

The relative anonymity of text messaging - particular to a complete stranger, or at least someone that doesn't know you, is IMHO what's made it attractive to bullies, and should make it interesting to the medical profession (there's only a small overlap between the two). It lets people avoid social conventions and pretend that they're not talking to a human being.

We saw this with PocketDoctor, a service we've been working on for nearly 5 years now, back in 2001... a surprising number of users were prepared to (without any prompting or indication that they'd get help) text in with sometimes-grisly details of their medical conditions. We put this down to the anonymity of the medium, and this anonymity can be put to good use; for instance, as well as doing the obvious and implementing appointment reminders using text messaging, let people cancel appointments by text too; getting some notice of a cancellation is far better than their just failing to show up...