A group of Facebook fans is attempting to get Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats into office in much the same way as a group of music fans got American rock band Rage Against The Machine to the top of the Christmas UK charts last December.

The “We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office” group has already attracted in excess of 100,000 people, and membership is growing fast.

People power won the day in December when the Rage group attracted 968,852 members who between them helped to purchase around 500,000 copies of the 1993 hit.

The group says it hopes to give Britain’s “underdog party a proper crack of the whip”.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg got a major boost from last week’s leaders debate on ITV which sparked off an SEO campaign led by the stand-out catchphrase from the evening – “I agree with Nick.”

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It was billed as a new form of politics, the leadership debate that the UK has been calling out for in a somewhat vain attempt to tap into some of the political energy emanating from Capitol Hill and the Obama presidency.

The idea for a UK version of these debates pre-dates the current hoopla surrounding last night’s event. Harold Wilson was among the first to challenge an incumbent Prime Minister, Alec Douglas Home, to a debate, only to see his request rejected by Home on the grounds of turning the General Election into a ‘Top of the Pops’ contest. Latterly, Jim Callaghan broached the topic with a young Margaret Thatcher, only for the Iron Lady to reject his request through fear that a confrontation would eat into her already sizeable advantage in the polls.

Well, last night saw the idea become reality – and the reality proved somewhat disappointing. Nonetheless, it would be fair to conclude that the real winner of the night was the man who many had, to this point at least, written off in the General Election – Liberal Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg.

Within five minutes of the debate closing, the now legendary tag line ‘I agree with Nick’ – which came out of the mouths of both Labour leader Gordon Brown, and Conservative top man David Cameron during the debate – began reverberating around the modern-day political talking shop otherwise known as Twitter.

The SERPs became awash with real-time proclamations of support for the young upstart Liberal hopeful. SEO hopefuls began registering every conceivable domain extension in the hope that they might ride this wave of activity. Google Insights for Search registered a sizeable spike in search volume. Yahoo identified the furore as the buzz term of the moment. The SERPs were, and the following morning still are, awash with activity.

Just how big a part will the channels of the internet play in determining the next resident of Number 10 Downing Street? Has the internet redefined the way in which political parties must channel their propaganda? Have the main parties been active enough in their online marketing efforts?

The Conservatives have taken the lead, establishing paid search campaigns in Google and bidding on their competitors’ terms. Labour has failed miserably in its attempts to generalise Dave as a Gene Hunt figure, much to the amusement of its rivals. The Liberal Democrats, to this point at least, have neglected their online marketing strategy, to the point where we can say with some conviction that Vince Cable has forgotten to budget for it.

However, with a new range of ‘I agree with Nick’ t-shirts making their way on to Spreadshirt.net, and with the SERPs literally awash with support for Clegg, this year may see the Liberal Democrats demonstrate, albeit unwittingly, the power of the social media driven political campaign.

The internet agrees with Nick – do you?

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A former semi-professional footballer has attempted to set the world record for the longest online advert ever.

David Sheath spent four days, two hours and two minutes painting a brand new white Fiat 500 with pink nail polish.

According to the World Records Academy, he used a total of 131 bottles of nail varnish during the task, which was filmed in a studio in South London and broadcast in a continuous feed over the internet.

The publicity stunt, which aims to promote a limited edition Fiat 500 model, has yet to be confirmed by Guinness as a world record.

The car comes in shocking pink is available exclusively online with an on the road price of £11,700.

IBM has introduced an inexpensive Web-based corporate email service that will compete with Google Inc's Google Apps, which despite its increasing popularity, has recently suffered several high-profile outages.

IBM’s LotusLive iNotes service includes email, calendar and content management, and the company says it is ideal for employees who either don’t need fully-featured email and collaboration software, or currently have no access to company email.

“It’s going to be very competitive both functionally and from an economic point of view,” said IBM vice president of online collaboration services Sean Poulley.

The move is thought to be part of efforts to head off Google, which with Google Apps, has in recent years has been offering businesses email, word processing and other tools on a subscription basis.

It reflects moves in the general software market, which has shifted from offering applications stored locally on a computer hard drive, to ones which are stored and accessed online.

IBM is to start selling LotusLive iNotes early in October 2009. The lightweight email service will cost $36 (approximately £21 sterling) per user per year, undercutting Google price for what is widely considered a more robust product by about 25 per cent.

IBM’s offering is more basic than Google’s, but the technology giant could attract more customers because it has decades more experience serving the business market. Its products include Lotus Notes, one of the world’s two most widely used email programs.

Google, on the other hand, generates the bulk of its revenue from advertisements placed on free search products targeted at consumers, and is just getting into the business of selling to businesses.

“The IBM brand will help a lot,” said Forrester Research Inc analyst Liz Herbert.

iNotes will also compete with a Web-based email service from Microsoft Corp that costs about $120 per user per year, according to the software maker’s website.