Another instance of nearly spontaneous community action has appeared on Twitter over the last couple of days, and the speed with which it's attracting participants is breathtaking.

On Wednesday morning, Internet comedian ZeFrank posted three Twitter messages.

And so began Color War 2008.

The comedian explained his thinking in a subsequent blog post.

We used to play color wars at summer camp. Near the end of the year the entire camp would split up into colors, red, green, black, blue, etc... and compete in a series of events: tug of war, egg toss, basketball - sort of like the movie Meatballs, except all within the same camp.

During the summer we were divided into discreet units, older kids here, younger kids there, Hiawathans by the lake Tawasenthans by the ropes course, etc... But when it came time for color wars you had no idea who would be on your team. It was a release, and it was viciously fun.

So, for a while I've been thinking about how a color war might look online. How would you play tug of war, or other group games that were silly, time limited, and awesome... and more importantly how could you create teams within an already functioning environment to have that same people-mash-up effect that we did at camp.

Twitter seemed perfect.

By now, thousands of Twitter participants have joined a team. To what end? Who knows. In his most recent post, ZeFrank wonders how the teams can play games like tug-of-war online.

But one thing is sure -- the power of the Internet for bringing together large communities quickly and with enthusiasm has been confirmed yet again.

Oh, and I signed up for Team Tartan.