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“Operation Humble Kanye” is sort of a success.  If you don’t know, Stephen Colbert attempted to have the top album on iTunes by telling everyone to buy his Christmas album on December 3rd at 5PM Eastern.  Last night, the album was #15.  This morning, “A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All” is the #3 album on iTunes.

Now, while Colbert was trying to get the top spot, he was also trying to have his album overtake Kanye West’s “808s & Heartbreak.“  West’s album is now #4, looking up at Colbert’s #3 album.  Does this mean you can game iTunes by having a lot of people buy your album just within a couple of minutes?  Perhaps.  Maybe record companies are already doing that to move things like Britney Spears’ “Circus” to the top spot. 

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Stephen Colbert is trying to push his Christmas album to the top of the iTunes album charts.  How?  He’s organizing “Operation Humble Kanye” to game iTunes.  Kanye West’s album was #1 when Colbert started this plan (currently, Britney Spears is in the top spot). 

His plan is to get everyone to buy “A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All” today, December 3rd, at 5PM Eastern time. 

Can this actually work?  Will a concentrated surge of purchases propel the album to the top of the charts?  I guess we’ll find out later today.  Check out the video after the break.

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It seems that Mozilla must credit a fairly large portion of its Guinness World Record for the highest number of software downloads in a 24 hour period to none other than Stephen Colbert himself. It’s not surprising to hear that Colbert’s on-show guests experience a rush of publicity immediately after being viewed on the show, but could Colbert also have an influence on Al Gore’s internets? Apparently, after mentioning the release of Firefox 3 on his show, “The Colbert Report,“ Mozilla’s servers experienced a huge spike in downloads from their site on Download Day. Referred to as the “Colbert Bump,“ the effect of the rush in publicity is known to earn increased sales, news interviews, and in this case, and incredible number of downloads. At minute 23 of the broadcast, Colbert says just 7 words: “Firefox 3 just got the Colbert Bump.“ Sure enough, minutes later Mozilla sees a huge jump in downloads on their website. Not only was the “bump” felt during the live broadcast, but another bump can be seen when the episode was replayed a couple hours later. Now, if he can influence the hearts of thousands of internet users, why did he drop out of that election? He is the Internet (And So Can You!).

Via [Mozilla Blog]

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Sections: Web, Downloads, Web Browsers