At this point, we've all heard the story of Farouk Olu Aregbe's Facebook group "Barack Obama (One Million Strong For Barack)." As of this writing, the group is less than 1000 members away from a total membership count of 300,000. This is somewhat of a stunning achievement, especially when you consider that no other candidate has a group that even compares to this group's size.

As far as I can tell, Aregbe is not affiliated with the Obama campaign. He is a connected, concerned supporter but nothing more. At the same time, many other concerned supporters of other candidates have started Facebook groups - there are hundreds listed for the campaigns (and potential campaigns) I surveyed - Clinton, Obama, Edwards, McCain, Giuliani and Romney. None of these groups even come close to Aregbe's group in terms of size. Why?

First, lets survey the state of Facebook groups for the political candidates. With the exception of the Clinton campaign (more on this later), the groups were fairly homogenous. Some groups supported the candidate, some groups opposed the candidate. There were a few global groups, with membership not exceeding 5000, with the average large group membership around 1000-2000. There are also many subgroups based on region (DC for..), interest group (College Students for..) or quip (If X wins the election, I'm moving to..). For each candidate there were many groups, with the majority of groups small (sub-100) and unnoticed.

The outlier in my survey was Clinton's campaign, where opposition groups account for a large percentage of groups formed. In fact, the most significant group was one entitled "ANTI Hillary Clinton for president '08", which has nearly 48,000 members at my last count. This is clearly the largest candidate opposition group on Facebook, and its size is quite noteworthy. The tone among anti-Clinton groups was rather vile, with a number of groups (often created by high school students) advocating violence towards the candidate.

So what made Aregbe's group special? Just as in the case of Ben Parr's "Students Against Facebook News Feed", the success of the group was somewhat arbitrary, but there were factors that contributed to its success. First, Aregbe's group was properly timed. He created it the day after Obama's video "A Message from Barack" made its way around the web. Unlike the inevitable campaign announcements of Edwards and Clinton, Obama's announcement was a pleasant and noteworthy surprise to many. This, combined with the connected nature of Aregbe (his day job is advising college student government) made his timing and placement perfect. The message moved through his network (via Facebook news feeds) like wildfire, quickly arriving on the growth path that has let it to its success today. To boil things down a little more, this was a 1) perfectly-timed message sent to a 2) primed audience by a 3) maven/connector.

Perhaps this is why the other groups have failed. For a group to be as successful as Aregbe's, it may need all of these factors simultaneously, which is a rare situation. In Parr's case, he denies being a connector, though his message could have easily been picked up and carried forward by a connector. At the same time, Facebook makes it difficult for groups of large volume to form in this context. Since group searches are returned based on semantic match, and not on size, it may take someone clicking through 15 pages of returns before they come across the group with the largest number of participants.

Does this mean that candidates won't be able to engineer this process to build large Facebook groups? In fact, if they optimize their offerings, I think they will also be able to create large Facebook groups.

• First, the group must be strategically named - the candidate's name must be in the group name and description. At the same time, since group searches are returned alphabetically, a group name like America for Candidate X will return before Candidate X for President.

• Second, there must be an opportune time. Obama's announcement got everyone talking - and since at that point Obama occupied more cognitive space than other candidates, people were primed for Obama. Since candidates can't announce again, what can they do for an encore? Well, a scandal (America supports Candidate X) or especially noteworthy event (America is proud of Candidate X) might create opportune timing.
• Third, the candidate will likely be the connector. If the candidate appeals to the audience directly to join their Facebook group, their centrality could spark viral growth.

Even if they do all of these things, success is not guaranteed. There are only a few very large groups in Facebook, so there is certainly some magic in the process. But groups are valuable. Group membership is an identity statement, one that influences the cohort. Group membership creates a place for supporters to come together to discuss, learn and share. Perhaps more importantly, groups are huge mailing lists - the group owner can message every groups member directly. I haven't a clue what the election laws say about this if a group was candidate-managed, but a list of that size and concentration is enviable in any situation.