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Last week, I received a Facebook update from a true American (some say MegaAmerican) hero: Stephen Colbert. Colbert, of whose show I am one of 10,757 Facebook fans, sent out an update to let his supporters know that he was listed as a finalist for Time’s Most Influential Person award. While he lost out in 2006 to Korean pop sensation Rain, this year’s online to online strategy should net better dividends.

Stephen has a history of using his show to rig these contests. In 2006, he deployed the Colbert Nation to make him the winner of a Hungarian contest to name a bridge, and he’s doomed multiple wikipedia articles to a variety of protected statuses by mentioning them.

But his bids have always been launched from his show, requiring viewers to watch the show, go to their computers, find the contest page, and vote. We’ve always known that there was a significant dropoff in offline to online actions, such as direct mail asks (though asks to make a donation online are often successful because it’s less effort to donate using a web site than it is to go through the myriad of steps it takes to mail a check).

Using a Facebook update to encourage fans to vote him up may not pay dividends this year. With only 10,000 fans, Colbert may not get the bump he needs to win, especially since his closest current competitor for the number one spot, Shigeru Miyamoto has already received 805,000+ votes. But in future years as his online fan base grows, Stephen may be able to use this high concentration of online to online users to push him over the top.

And that’s the word.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Social Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.