“1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T. Colbert” strains Facebook server
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It’s incredible, but Stephen Colbert’s internet muscle has just been demonstrated yet again. Here’s the latest from The Caucus (political blog of The New York Times):
Colbert’s Facebook Flock
October 25, 2007, 2:35 pm
By Brian StelterStephen Colbert’s presidential candidacy may be phony, but his supporters are very, very real.
On the popular social networking site Facebook, dozens of groups had already called for a “Stewart/Colbert” ticket in 2008, a reference to Mr. Colbert and his Comedy Central colleague Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show.”
Late on Oct. 16, immediately after the comedian declared his intentions on his satirical news show “The Colbert Report,” new groups began to form. One of them — a group created by Raj Vachhanni and titled “1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert” — has grown to include more than 880,000 members in just over a week, making it the most popular political group on Facebook by far.
. . .
He didn’t expect the excitement about Mr. Colbert’s candidacy to place a strain on Facebook’s server capacity. But the sheer volume of group participants — 78 new members per minute for the past eight days — forced the Web site to take the group offline temporarily.
“The group was growing very quickly and began overloading one of our servers, but we have since resolved that problem,” a Facebook spokeswoman confirmed.
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8 Comments
October 25th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
I am proud to say that I have personally contributed to Facebook’s server problems. :P
I was actually watching the numbers of the group grow last night. I was bored. And within a period of about two minutes it grew by about a thousand people. Duuuude.
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October 25th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I recruited 5 members! :D
Hah!
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October 25th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
I made all my friends join it. Ah, Facebook, where would we be without you?
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October 25th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
It’s amazing. I think it’ll hit a million in two hours or so.
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October 26th, 2007 at 3:05 am
[...] posted yesterday about the strain placed on FaceBook servers by the group 1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert. [...]
October 29th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
[...] had some trouble with the massive numbers of Nation members, but the Heroes finally made the ‘1,000,000 Strong for [...]
November 15th, 2007 at 1:38 am
I was actually invited to join, but I declined on the basis that YES, it would fill up too quickly and crash the servers.
I’m just thoughtful that way.
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December 30th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
[...] . . . in under ten days. As reported in the New York Times, the group grew so quickly that it even strained Facebook’s servers, registering more than one new member of the group per second for over a week. [...]