Four and a half million signatures collected in a day by Google on their online petition against SOPA. One hundred and sixty two million visitors reached by the Wikipedia’s 24 hour blackout. Add at least three and a half additional visitors reached by my own efforts.

Yesterday marked a small move forward against an opponent that is likely to recoil, wait and strike again, having the budget to do so.

Still. This was a very promising exercise in what I would call social activism, the first-ever truly intelligent use of social media. There were 2.4 million tweets about SOPA in one day.

It doesn’t end the war, but it is a victory won on new ground by inexperienced fighters who will soon realize that the Internet gives them tremendous fire power. “They” are you. Me. Them. The public opinion. A multitude of end-users empowered for the first time in our race’s history to take to the streets and manifest their opinion on a worldwide scale, without even stepping foot in said streets.

The idea of an entire bloodless revolution fought and won on the web is no longer science-fiction. It has become real and doable. Will it happen?

You can read about yesterday in much greater detail over at Tech Crunch.