The largest online rally in history.

Facebook, the social networking site, has an application called Causes that allows users to raise funds and create online rallies. It was used in a "get out the vote" effort for the U.S. election. 1,745,754 people participated, generating 4,919,071 status messages. This is thought to be the largest online rally ever conducted.

70 percent of the participants included support for Barack Obama in their messages, 21 percent support for John McCain, and seven percent did not specifically endorse a candidate.

We know that social networking involves a lot more young people than old, and probably more liberals than conservatives. The technology may make a difference. Five million messages, shared among the networks of one and three-quarter million people, is a lot of volume and may have helped turn out the vote.

That these messages supported Obama more than three times as often as they supported McCain may have helped Obama. Indeed, getting lots of reminders to a crowd that mostly supported him may also have helped get him the victory.