Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Colbert Bump!

Well it's official, Stephen Colbert has proven his digital influence once again. Apparently, after mentioning Firefox 3 on his show, downloads of the new version of the popular browser spiked in apparent relation to the "Colbert Bump". This is according to a Mozilla blog called Blog of Metrics, and the post was one of the big Diggs, so at least we know Mozilla understands a little about virality. Anyhoo, according to Mozilla's data, "At minute 23 of the broadcast, Colbert said, 'Firefox 3 just got the Colbert Bump.' What happened next?... We saw a big spike in downloads exactly one and two minutes later..." see graph:
In a related article on NPR.org, "A study by San Diego political science professor James Fowler suggests there may be some truth behind the "truthiness." He shares his findings on Colbert's impact on campaign contributions with Madeleine Brand." Apparently Democratic candidates who appeared on the show received 44% more campaign contributions than their counterparts. A complete version of the report can be seen here.

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