Around 10 p.m. last night, Barack Obama’s official Facebook page reached 1 million supporters. The news has generated buzz, and rightfully so. It dwarfs John McCain’s 147,000+ supporters, demonstrating his breadth of support. (techPresident has charts of various online popularity metrics) Politico’s Ben Adler reported the two campaign’s internal social networking tools have similar numbers – with my.barackobama.com over 900,000 and McCain Space reporting only “tens of thousands.”
I found it interesting it took so long to reach the 1 million milestone. After all, it took just 9 days for Stephen Colbert’s group to reach 1 million members in October 2007. Barack Obama’s independent “One Million Strong” group is only up to 566,000 after several months of trying. I don’t think it’s because of political apathy, especially since political groups opposing Bush and Clinton already hit the mark. What I think it suggests is that people take supporting a candidate seriously, even if that action is the single click it requires to join a virtual “group.” With five months remaining until the election, I wonder how high the numbers will go.
There’s no easy way to find a list of the biggest lists on Facebook, although a few lists exist. Here’s a sampling that have tasted the rarefied air of 1+ million supporters:
- Six Degrees Of Separation – The Experiment (4,911,727)
- Let’s set and break a Guiness Record!!!! Approved by guinnessworldrecords.com (2,822,768)
- If you remember this you grew up in the 90’s (1,538,571)
- When I was your age, Pluto was a planet. (1,306,606)
- 1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert (1,248,629)
- The Largest Facebook Group Ever (1,191,504)
- I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who dislike George Bush! (1,001,973)
- Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary) (992,294 – was over 1M)