Yours truly braved the crowds this year to attend the New Year’s celebrations in Times Square. It was a long day—my companions and I arrived in the city about 11:30, and were in position with a great view of the ball by about 2:00. It was a long wait; you try standing in the same place for ten hours and you’ll understand why everyone was cheering at midnight: the ordeal was over, we could all go home.

 

One of the things that kept the crowd on my side of the street (we were next to the MTV building) entertained was an MTV-sponsored giant screen on which were displayed text messages from people standing on the street. Mobile phone users simply typed in a special code, and whatever username they wanted displayed, then their message. A few minutes later—voila! There it was for thousands of people to read.

 

Here’s a wideshot of the screen, with surrounding buildings and the crowd across the street from where I was standing, contained by concrete barriers.

 

 

The text message screen became a way for strangers in a massive crowd to converse with each other. The messages, some in response to MTV-planted questions, included your standard debates about which was the best sports team, what people resolved to do in 2008, how tired people were of standing there, and way too many instances of “Welcome to the party.”

 

Here’s a sampling of the messages.

 

 

In my opinion, the text screen was a brilliant idea that gave an otherwise restless crowd something to do for long stretches of time.

 

Were you in Times Square on New Year’s Eve? Happy New Year!