Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is certainly giving her Facebook fan page a workout this week, as she nears one million fans.

Using the site to flack her new book, “Going Rogue,” which comes out officially today, it got a big boost from her interview today with Oprah Winfrey, clocking in at close to 995,000 fans last night.

In comparison, her Twitter page was as empty of followers as the great outdoors.

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If spinning is an intense political skill, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is doing her very best at trying to create a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

As Om Malik reports on GigaOm, Whitman–who is trying to nab the Republican gubernatorial nomination in California–told a radio interviewer recently that “actually I think Skype will prove to be a good acquisition for eBay.”

Well, good if you mean the $2.6 billion purchase of the Interent telephony that didn’t ever work as Whitman had effusively promised in 2005. Or the ugly lawsuits over it. Or the successful shakedown by its co-founders to get a big chunk back.

You get the idea.

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Last week, after much delay, longtime Internet exec Julius Genachowski was confirmed by the Senate as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

It is an important role for the future development of the Web, of course, although it took a dog’s age into the new Democratic administration to approve him.

Hopefully, he and the other commissioners can soon get to work on a wide range of major digital issues, such as a national broadband plan that does not cost Americans a fortune.

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Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

Well, we’re still going–making the same long-term bet that the digital revolution will keep rolling as we did at D1. Here’s our lineup for D7.

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Almost-First Daughter Meghan McCain gave the Republican Party the analog equivalent of an unhappy emoticon yesterday in a column in The Daily Beast, predicting the political party will lose power quicker than a faulty iPhone if it does not get more Web-savvy pronto.

BoomTown always liked GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s sassy spawn, who had a pretty good blog during the campaign and was always coming out with some little nugget that I am sure made her PR handlers cringe.

Well, there she goes again!

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Here’s a video of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman talking to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show this morning about her nascent campaign to be governor of California as the Republican candidate.

Whitman, who was a favorite of failed Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, seems to have perfected the art of saying exactly nothing, even after Lauer asked her if she was nuts to run the “arguably ungovernable”–referencing a writer for the Sacramento Bee–California.

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How much do I love the Internet?

Muchety-much after seeing this interview that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave plastered all over the Web, in which the former Republican VP candidate gives a local Anchorage television station an interview as a Thanksgiving turkey is being slaughtered right behind her.

Still, ever the trouper (and sanguine hunter, it seems), Palin obliviously keeps up the turkey patter, having just “pardoned” another turkey earlier.

Such is fowl fate.

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Both President-Elect Barack Obama and the man he beat in a historic election, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, gave the kinds of speeches at the end of the last night that make one proud to be part of a country where stark differences still mean grace can prevail when it’s all over.

But don’t take my word for it–the Internet makes it possible to consider them again and again.

They are a shining example of–as Obama quoted our greatest president (in my estimation, at least), Abraham Lincoln last night–of how such a contest should end: “We are not enemies, but friends, though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

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In advance of tomorrow’s elections, here’s a pair of videos of the two presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, talking about tech.

While Obama has many more supporters in the tech and Internet sectors in terms of overall numbers, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, McCain’s tech fans include Cisco CEO John Chambers, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and former H-P head Carly Fiorina.

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As BoomTown has noted, one of the best things to come out of this election has been the very funny and very topical humor that has been on “Saturday Night Live” in this political cycle.

Headlined by Tina Fey’s perfect impression of Sarah Palin, it has been biting without stooping to the rank meanness from so many other places by both sides.

Last night, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain–who has been on SNL before (his “John McCain sings Streisand” skit was really a gem from that appearance)–was in two skits on the show and did a great job in both.

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The more things change, the more they actually do change.

At least, according to this excerpt from a 10-questions interview former Wonkette blogger Ana Marie Cox, who now contributes to Time magazine’s Swampland blog, did with Stop Smiling magazine.

In questions No. 7 and 8 here, she discusses the huge differences in the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, in terms of blogs, and how the image of bloggers has shifted dramatically with mainstream media.

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Saturday night was all Sarah Palin’s, after the Alaska governor and Republican VP candidate appeared on “Saturday Night Live” with a classy comic turn.

Now, the Democratic side–which has been overwhelmingly more active in creating funny online videos–is back with yet another political spoof: a boy band called, of course, Boybama.

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Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin did a very smooth–if sweetly awkward–job in her appearance on “Saturday Night Live” last night.

It was a good decision to go low key and also do a bit of stunt casting by bringing in Mark Wahlberg, who was mocked in an impersonation last week by SNL, and also Alec Baldwin. Palin also appeared later, rocking out to a very funny rap.

Sometimes politics can be really ugly and sometimes silly–this time Palin managed to poke fun at herself without being either.

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As former Disney CEO and online video investor Michael Eisner said in a recent onstage Q&A appearance about what works for video on the Web: “Sex seems to work. User-generated, sports, news, anything with Sarah Palin works.”

Indeed, anything with Sarah Palin.

Here is the latest Internet effort, an unusual interactive site called PalinAsPresident in which you click on various items in the Oval Office, where Palin is sitting behind the desk, to hear funny remarks from her.

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Is there anything comic Sarah Silverman will not say?

Apparently not, from this aggressively pro-Sen. Barack Obama video that has become a huge hit on the Web, called “The Great Schlep.”

In it, the viciously funny Silverman plans to blame–I am not kidding–old Jewish grandparents–if Democratic nominee Obama loses the Presidential election.

Thus, she plots revenge.

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