COMEDIAN TO RECEIVE ‘KEY TO COLUMBIA’

COLUMBIA, S.C. (TPS) – What started out as a joke — the prospect of late night talk show comedian Stephen Colbert running a quasi-faux presidential campaign — appears to be gaining some steam and causing more than just a buzz throughout cyberspace. A group that aimed to enlist one million members in 10 days supporting Colbert on the social networking site Facebook passed the one million mark overnight; making it the fastest growing group in Facebook’s history.

Here is the exponential rate at which the group grew to one million:

• 5,000 Members at 4:59 PM (EST) 10/17/2007
• 50,000 Members at 4:48 PM (EST) 10/18/2007
• 100,000 Members at 12:54 AM (EST) 10/19/2007
• 250,000 Members at 11:58 AM (EST) 10/20/2007
• 500,000 Members at 5:11 AM (EST) 10/23/2007
• 750,000 Members at 5:31 PM (EST) 10/24/2007
• 1,000,000 Members at ~7:00 AM (EST) 10/26/2007

To put that into perspective, similar groups for Barack Obama and against Hillary Clinton have roughly 381,000 members in nine months and 488,000 members in eight months, respectively. The Colbert group earned their million members in just over one week.

“Even if they’re not serious about supporting Colbert, many members do seem serious about what Colbert stands for — what they see as a poignant and intelligent disregard for the punditry of politics,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Monica Guzman wrote Wednesday in a story about the group.

How will that translate into actual support? It’s hard to tell.

But the two polls that took Colbert’s “candidacy” into account have shown him in fifth place among Democrats nationally at 2 percent, and a staggering 13 percent as an independent.

And in Columbia, Mayor Bob Coble has declared Sunday to be “Stephen Colbert Day.” Colbert will be presented a Key to the City on the Horseshoe at the University of South Carolina Sunday morning.

It looks like the humorous “Colbert Effect” may have some serious implications – especially if someone were to use the million-plus members in the Facebook group to do some fundraising.