Campaign takes control of 'official' MySpace site
Early cooperation broke down, problems erupted as candidacy revved up
Being past 40 and not as dexterous on the Web as my children, I wondered how the Obama team linked to social networking sites such as Facebook. I was also curious about how the campaign avoided connections to porn or hate sites or handled other delicate problems, since the Web is so vast. Someone asked Orton that very question, and he said there had been no issues he knew about.
What he didn't mention was the tussle between the Obama campaign and a man named Joe Anthony, who had started a MySpace page for the senator in 2004 when Obama was elected to Congress. (The story was first detailed Tuesday by Micah L. Sifry on the presidential watch site tech President.com. It has been quickly circulating through the Internet.)
Anthony, a paralegal in Los Angeles, was so enthusiastic about Obama, he not only set up the site, he and Obama's team worked in tandem and he allowed them to edit the content on the page. As Obama aide Joe Rospars told supporters on the campaign's blog Wednesday: "When it came to MySpace, we decided to take a leap."
After Obama's announcement that he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, things took off on the Anthony-managed MySpace page, and Obama eventually gleaned 160,000 "friends" -- people who signed on to the page.
Problems began to erupt. Anthony made some biographical bloopers, he posted podcasts from the Senate (a legal no-no), and there was, apparently, a "friend" connected to a page about Larry Flynt, the pornographer. Obama's new-media team got him to yank this stuff, but they began to feel anxious about not having real control of what was perceived as the official Obama MySpace site.
Then Anthony reportedly yanked the password to the site. "This changed the previous dynamic, and we could no longer access the profile at a moment's notice if need be," Rospar wrote bloggers.
The Obama people began to negotiate with Anthony. He asked for $39,000 to manage the Web site. They balked.
Executives at MySpace put the gavel to the dispute by giving Obama the rights to MySpace .com/barackobama and Anthony the list of 160,000 "friends."
Yes, Obama's Senate staff was naive to work with Anthony on MySpace page in the first place. Rospars wrote: "People around here say [the campaign] ... has been like building an airplane in midair, having already taken off."
But the determination to wrest control over the site was a no-brainer. What candidate would want someone else manipulating his go-to MySpace page? The story emphasizes the underlying perils of campaigning on the Web.
Bottom line: Keep your enemies close but your "friends" closer.