One group created by Raj Vachhani called "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" has attracted over one million members in a little over a week and it has become the most popular political group on Facebook.

On the groups Facebook page it says, "We did it! It only took us about 8 days to accumulate over 1 million members! Now, we must make sure that Colbert has the biggest group on Facebook. The biggest Facebook group has approximately 1.7 Million members, lets beat that."

Mr. Vachhani, a 16-year-old high school student from Montgomery, Ala., did not think that Colbert’s announcement for presidency would cause problems for Facebook’s servers. The number of group participants averaged 83 new members a minute for eight days. Facebook had to take the group offline for a brief period.

In an email interview with the New York Times, Mr. Vachhani said," "What amazed me the most was how [Barack] Obama’s 1 Million Strong Group took more than 8 months to get about 380,000 members, but Colbert’s 1 Million Strong Group took less than a week to get 750,000 members."

Google Seeks Court Time With Stewart, Colbert

The legal documents are flying between Viacom and Google. Their billion-dollar fight over alleged copyright infringement by Google’s YouTube video sharing site gained some star power recently.

CNet’s Crave blog said court depositions listing people each side wants to toss into a witness box and grill in front of a judge include several noteworthy people from both firms. Along with Stewart and Colbert, Google wants Viacom patriarch Sumner Redstone and CEO Philippe Dauman Sr presented for questioning.

That brings up one thrilling possibility: New Google hire and Columbia Law grad Philippe Dauman Jr badgering his father under oath.

Viacom has its sights set on the Google and YouTube leadership on its deposition wish list. YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chan, and Google’s leading triumvirate of Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.

The court will have to decide on the relevance each potential witness could have on the proceedings. We’re hoping someone will post them on YouTube if Colbert and/or Stewart have to make an appearance.

Colbert Sets Off Googlebomb

A large portion of the SEO community had a hand in shaping these results (which lead to ColbertNation.com).  As Search Engine Watch’s Greg Jarboe reported, "It all started at Search Engine Strategies last week, when Jonah Stein of The Alchemy of Search attended a taping of The Colbert Report . . ."

Colbert apparently suggested associating his name with the "giant brass balls" search term; the comedian’s diehard fans seem to have made him the "greatest living American" without any prompting.  And – if we assume that everyone who covered the story is a fan – that fan base includes such SEO notables as Rand Fishkin, Andy Beal, and Todd Malicoat, among others.

Still, we may be looking at the tail end of this rush of Colbert-related hoopla; Jarboe concluded his article by "[hoping] that this little blogstorm has run its course."  Other onlookers, such as CNET’s Caroline McCarthy, feel that Google itself may intervene.

"Google might have to invent a new ‘algorithm’ specifically for Colbert," she wrote.  And yet, in reference to the man who now has his own flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, McCarthy adds, "Unfortunately, that’d probably just inflate his ego even more."

Come now.  The man’s the "greatest living American"; he’s allowed to be a bit prideful.

Nate Anderson reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation – a nonprofit group that looks to protect digital rights and free speech – is suing Viacom for its misuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Among thousands of DMCA takedown notices sent out, is one of a Stephen Colbert parody video that the EFF claims doesn’t violate any copyright laws.

The video does contain clips from “The Colbert Report,” but the EFF argues that these qualify as fair use, since parody has a well-recognized copyright exemption. “Our clients’ video is an act of free speech and a fair use of ‘Colbert Report’ clips,” said EFF staff attorney Corynne McSherry in a statement…

We’ll keep an eye on this for you, as its important the courts recognize your rights to “fair use” of copyrighted content, otherwise, we’d all be in hot water.

Comments

What was more interesting than Colbert ripping on the entire administration in front of them and the entire press corps? According to Nielsen Buzz Metrics, a multitude of bloggers angry at LiveJournal’s change to its user interface.

The blogosphere is a strange, strange place.

Nielsen ranked the top blog posts of 2006, ranking them according to how many inbound links came their way between January and December. There were 18 blogs generating the 100 most popular posts of the year.

In June, a Canadian blogger was so angry at LiveJournal for its shoddy graphics, “obstructive interfaces popping up,” ” lack of customer-service displayed by the team in relation to ‘rebuilding’ the site,” and “clearly insane string of ‘fiddle-faddle’ from the Support Team,” that he started a petition to stop the madness. Almost 800 bloggers, and 5000 (yes, 5000) commentators at his blog agreed.

That number is pretty surprising given that all you have to do is blog somewhere else. But who are we to judge the wishes of the mob, er, blogosphere?

The remaining top ten weren’t the most diverse in terms of subject matter. For the most part, liberal (or at least, anti-Bush administration) posts prevailed, pulling in Colbert’s antics, and the comments of Keith Olbermann (who?) came in third and fifth place for scathing comments about Donald Rumsfeld and the President.

Those three posts all came from CrooksAndLiars.com, which actually contributed four of the top ten linked-to posts.

Technorati’s Dave Sifry made the list three times, coming in fourth, ninth, and tenth, for three installments on the “State of the Blogosphere.”

So what are we to conclude about the active blogosphere, then? Is it fair to say it leans left? Is it too dismissive to assume there are more important things than a blogging service’s UI? Is it insulting to say that the blogosphere is self-absorbed, linking to itself (via Sifry) three times, and bit on the geek crybaby side?

Oops, shouldn’t have said that.

“A minority of highly influential blogs continues to influence the broader conversation on the web,” said Jonathan Carson, CEO, Nielsen BuzzMetrics. “However, unique circumstances and events, such as the LiveJournal protest against proposed interface changes, can resonate with passionate stakeholders and catapult lesser-known blogs to the top”.

That was more diplomatic.

Here are the top ten blog posts of 2006, according to Nielsen:

1. 2006 Petition Against Changes in the LiveJournal Interface

2. Colbert Does the White Correspondents’ Dinner

3. Keith Olbermann Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld

4. State of the Blogosphere, August 2006

5. Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Bush: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you.

6. Support Denmark: Why the Forbidden Cartoons Matter

7. SNL: If Al Gore were President

8. Milking it? (graphic war images)

9. State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth

10. State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1 On Blogosphere Growth

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“A minority of highly influential blogs continues to influence the broader conversation on the web,” said Jonathan Carson, CEO, Nielsen BuzzMetrics. “However, unique circumstances and events, such as the LiveJournal protest against proposed interface changes, can resonate with passionate stakeholders and catapult lesser-known blogs to the top”.

Coming in at the number 2 spot were crooks and liars post on Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and a comedic monologue he gave at the White House. The Colbert post was linked to 622 posts on 603 blogs.

MSNBC’s Keith Oleberman held the number 3 position with commentary on former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Olberman was linked to 359 posts on 340 blogs.

David Sifry, founder and CEO of blog-search engine Technorati had the fourth most popular post with his state-of the blogosphere report. His post was linked to 339 post on 298 blogs.

Rounding out the remainder of the top blogs were Keith Olberman at number 5, Support Denmark: Why The Forbidden Cartoons Matter at number 6, SNL : If Al Gore were President at 7, Milking it? at number 8, State of the Blogosphere was 9 and 10.

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Mike is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

Wikipedia Protects The Elephants

Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s news commentirical (it’s fun to make up words) show The Colbert Report, analyzing Wikipedia’s information democratization, incited an editing bonanza.

“Definitions will greet us as liberators” became the guiding assumption.

Of course, he was kidding when he told his viewers to edit the Wikipedia entry on elephants to say that the elephant population had tripled over the last six months. He was kidding, right?

It doesn’t matter if it were a joke anymore because the resulting flashflood at the site brought down the darling of the Wisdom of Crowds, um, crowd in record time.

An error message shortly appeared telling visitors the Wikimedia Foundation servers were experiencing “technical difficulties.”

Wikipedia came back online a short time later with 20 elephant-related entries locked, barring anonymous or new users from editing the articles. But they weren’t the only one’s blocked from the site.

Andrew, a.k.a Tawker, a member of the Wikipedia vandalism police was so steamed about the rash of elephant-entry poaching that he banned Colbert himself from using Wikipedia. Tawker says the database overload was unrelated to Colbert’s orchestrated pummeling of the site, and invites Colbert to invite him on his show to talk about it – airfare courtesy of Comedy Central.

John Q chronicles the event on his blog, where Wikipedia mods boast that they had beaten Colbert’s coup-de-pachyderms, and that Colbert had “vastly underestimated the speed of the Wiki user.”

“Yes, he was joking,” writes Q. “But he knew as well as anyone that the moment he suggested it, swarms of a**holes would respond quickly by making these edits. But the Wikipedia custodians responded quickly as well.”

Burn, Colbert! What do you have to say for yourself? You may have pulled a Wiki fast one, but there’s nothing that can beat a Wiki-quickie – except for maybe the school field hockey team.

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