Colbert Nation Rules Facebook

Fictional presidential campaign rocks online fans
By Jane Yager,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 29, 2007 4:30 AM CDT
Colbert Nation Rules Facebook
Stephen Colbert poses during the launch party for "Stephen Colbert's AmeriCone Dream", his new Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor, in this March 5, 2007 file photo in New York. YouTube wants to question Comedy Central comedians Jon Stewart and Colbert as part of its defense against claims that the online...   (Associated Press)

The Facebook group "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T. Colbert" reached a million members in just over a week, making the organization devoted to the comedian's phony presidential campaign the fastest-growing political group in the four-year history of the social networking site. 

The 16-year-old student who founded the group expressed amazement at how much faster the Colbert group had grown than Facebook's Barack Obama group, which took eight months to reach 380,000 members, reports the New York Times. The sheer volume of enthusiasm for Colbert's "campaign" forced Facebook to take the group off line temporarily, with 83 new members a minute straining the web site's server capacity. (More Stephen Colbert stories.)

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