It seems that Barack Obama’s campaign has taken the MySpace page that a supporter started and ran for 2 1/2 years. The page had 160,000 “friends” but the campaign became uncomfortable with an outsider running it. So they asked for it and the guy running it, Joe Anthony, said sure – for a price. MySpace stepped in, awarded the site to the Obama campaign but gave the friends to Anthony.
A few things come to mind. First, are the Obama people such novices that they had no idea what cooperating on a MySpace site would do? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for this site to become a part of the official campaign long before now?
Second, how many will continue to build support sites for their preferred candidates if they risk having their hard work taken away – especially without compensation? Can you imagine Raising Kaine being taken over by the Kaine people and the folks there not being compensated?
The article says that the going rate for email addresses of supporters is $1 each. Why the Obama campaign balked at paying $49,000 is a mystery to me. That’s chump change compared to what they are going to be spending on this campaign. Can you imagine what a force 160,000 young, energetic voters could be? How much is the Obama campaign going to spend to try to get those folks back?
I think this was a mistake on the part of the Obama campaign. Of course, it’s probably good that it happened this early. Who’s going to remember this episode in a few months?
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VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Wow. I’m trying to find the folks in this story who *didn’t* get screwed–and I’m also having a hard time trying to figure out who didn’t get what they had coming to them. Boo on Mr. Anthony for turning around and charging a commission for volunteer work–yes, he had control of the site and so he had control of the friends list, but while possions is 9/10ths of the law, the remaining 1/10th should probably be “don’t be a jerk,” and I suspect everyone who joined Obama’s myspace page as a friend joined to support Mr. Obama’s campaign, not Mr. Anthony’s financial ambitions. He doesn’t deserve a dime.
Meanwhile boo on the Obama campaign for being organizationally inept and not getting a handle on all of this sooner. Giving a volunteer enough control over anything so that they can change a password and lock the staff out was a ridiculously poor decision; you might as well put a volunteer in charge of maintaining your fundraising list and voter file. Forget controlling the message–how about controlling your password, guys?
The only real losers here are the 140,000 folks who signed up to be involved in Obama’s network and ended up in Anthony’s instead.
Completely disagree with the characterization of Anthony’s deserts. He clearly busted his ass for Obama and the campaign (and the supporters of both). While I don’t know enough about how things broke down between him and the campaign (and so far, it doesn’t seem anyone does) to judge, I certainly do think that he was deserving of something more than a pat on the back. Especially from a campaign that will shovel $$ by the wheelbarrow into media consultants pockets in the next year.
(And yes, Obama’s folks should be slapped around for not being smart enough to pick up that namespace the minute he started his Senate campaign. That’s what pretty much every politician ought to do.)